


How to Be a Human

by TempleCloud



Series: Gardas [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Adopted Children, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dragons, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Past Child Abuse, Were-Creatures, Witches, Wizards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 28
Words: 66,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24862237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TempleCloud/pseuds/TempleCloud
Summary: Gardas doesn't know where the past fourteen years of his life went, or what connection he had with the dragon that had been ravishing the Downs. Stripped of his magic and exiled, he is forced to become guardian of a grey-haired, golden-eyed baby. But when he is reunited with an old friend, and his memory restored, the situation starts to get even worse.Original work, but influenced by a lot of the things I've read, so it's multiply fannish - enjoy spotting references.
Series: Gardas [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798888
Comments: 49
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

Gardas wasn’t sure why his trial wasn’t taking place in the Walled City. For the past two weeks, he had been held prisoner in what looked as though it had been a cowshed, with a magic-restraining collar around his neck so that he couldn’t use his powers, and his hands and feet shackled to prevent any more mundane means of escape. Not that Gardas had fancied his chances of escape anyway. Quite apart from the large troll guards stationed outside – not the local trolls of the Downs, who were mostly pale, sickly creatures, but craggy-featured grey trolls from the hills to the west – he had been too ill most of the time even to try. Whenever he tried to remember what had happened, he had felt dizzy and confused, and sometimes even fainted. Gardas hated being ill. It reminded him of the pranks that Azalar, his master, had used to play on him when they were boys.

Azalar’s cousin Auric had come in to visit Gardas every day of his imprisonment, to bring him food and to reassure him not to worry. Not about the past that he couldn’t remember (‘It wasn’t your fault. You weren’t yourself,’), not about his upcoming trial (‘It’s all right; I’ll take care of you,’) and not about the dizzy spells (‘It might be some sort of hex Azalar put on you, or it might just be you making yourself sick with fretting. Just concentrate on getting through today, and I’ll take you to a healer as soon as we get a chance,’). This made a lot of things not to think about. Gardas had spent most of his time seeing how many sit-ups and touch-toes he could do.

He supposed Auric must be his master now, since apparently Azalar was now dead. Gardas was vaguely, guiltily aware that he seemed to have caused Azalar’s death, though he couldn’t remember the details. At any rate, Auric didn’t think that anyone would be sorry about Azalar’s death as such – certainly, Auric himself didn’t seem to miss his cousin – but, nonetheless, there were horrible executions reserved for slaves who killed their masters.

Then again, _was_ he still a slave? Azalar’s parents had bought him when he was eleven, on the understanding that they would pay for his schooling up until the age of eighteen, after which he would pay them back by working for them or Azalar up to the age of twenty-five. If he had shown enough promise for them to decide to send him to university up to the age of twenty-one, they might have gone on owning him until he was thirty-one, but Gardas couldn’t imagine them caring to do that. Auric might have, if it had been up to him, but he and Azalar would have been only twenty, perhaps at university themselves or just starting their careers, by the time Gardas finished school.

But now, somehow, Auric, whom Gardas remembered as a young man of eighteen, was thirty-two, with a full, red-gold beard to counterpoint his light gold hair. And Gardas himself, who had already been as tall as Azalar and rather taller than Auric when he was sixteen and they were eighteen, now towered over Auric like a mountain troll. He was thirty, apparently, and his body looked lean and sinewy from what he could see of it. Disappointingly, he still had a sprinkling of pimples (mostly on his back and buttocks, where he couldn’t reach to squeeze them), and his hair seemed to be already thinning, but Gardas had never worried much about his appearance.

At any rate, this morning Auric arrived earlier than usual, with clean clothes, a bucket of water, a towel, and a comb, to help Gardas get ready for his trial. He began by persuading the duty troll to give him the keys to Gardas’s shackles, after which the troll locked them in together before Auric undid the heavy iron cuffs. Next, Auric bathed the sore patches around Gardas’s wrists and ankles, anointed them with soothing ointment, and bandaged them. ‘Not that putting the manacles back on is going to do you any good,’ he said apologetically. ‘If you get off, I can heal you properly later, but it might help if the inquisitor and the jury feel a bit sorry for you. In the meantime, do you want to wash yourself, or would it help if I did it? It’s not a good idea getting your dressings wet, after all.’

Gardas wasn’t sure if complaining was going to get him into trouble, but he looked dubiously at the swirls of blood in the water. Auric cast a purifying spell, followed by a warming spell. Gardas stretched, wincing as the blood flowed into stiff muscles, then peeled off the grubby clothes that he had been wearing for the past two weeks, and briskly began rubbing himself down with the damp flannel. It could have been worse, he knew. At least the manacles had allowed him enough freedom of his hands to pull down his trousers when he needed to use the slop-bucket, and enough use of his legs to walk over to it. All the same, while Gardas was not a fastidious man, going for two weeks without a change of underpants was something he hadn’t had to endure since before Azalar’s parents had bought him, and it was good to feel fresh and clean again.

When he had finished, he rubbed himself dry, dressed in a clean set of patched old clothes which covered even less of his long limbs than the previous ones had, and ran a comb through his hair. The hair seemed to fall out in large clumps, as if he had aged much more than the fourteen years everyone said, though it was still black. Finally, he let Auric lock the manacles back in place. They wouldn’t fit over his bandaged wrists and ankles, and clenched uncomfortably tightly round his forearms and calves. Auric hadn’t brought him any boots, and Gardas didn’t bother asking for them. After all, Auric didn’t _have_ to visit his cousin’s murderer at all, let alone give him the chance to wash and change his clothes.

Auric knocked on the door to let the guard-troll know it was safe to let them out. Outside stood a skinny, dark-haired boy of perhaps ten – no, Gardas realised, at least twelve or thirteen, but short for his age – who glared at Gardas with undisguised hatred. He had one arm in a sling, and wore the scorched remains of a school robe. ‘Do I really have to testify in his _defence?_ ’ he asked Auric. ‘Just because he…’

‘Enough,’ said Auric. ‘You’ll have time to tell the _whole_ story – the parts that reflect well on Gardas, and the parts that don’t – in due course. But the court needs to hear Gardas’s own account first.’

‘I thought you said he couldn’t remember anything?’

‘That’s right. Well, let’s go – and thank you for keeping him safe, sir,’ Auric added to the troll, who made no reply.

Auric led the way, with his left hand supporting Gardas’s right elbow as if he were escorting a friend rather than dragging a criminal slave to stand trial for his life. Gardas didn’t know much about farms, having spent his early childhood in the shanty town that stood outside the City proper, but he realised that the stone building he had been kept in had once been part of a bigger complex of buildings – more animal stalls? – in the midst of the ruins of other buildings – barns full of crops? The farmhouse itself? Both the buildings and what might once have been fields were now blackened ruins. Gardas had been expecting the countryside to be full of nettles and brambles. As Auric gently levitated him a foot or so above the ground, to spare his bare feet over a pile of broken glass and sharp stones – and the charred remains of what looked like human bones – he thought that nettles might have been preferable.

Somehow, someone had managed to bring the Seat of Judgement from the Walled City to set it up in an open-air court which nestled in a hollow between the Downs. He supposed the location made it easier for the crowds sitting on the charred slopes of the hills to hear what was going on.

Gardas realised that he recognised the place. He and Beatrice and Azalar and Auric had been here only last year – or rather, back when he was sixteen. These were the Holy Hills, with their carvings of a dragon, a griffin, a unicorn, and a werewolf. Azalar, who was frightened of heights, had stayed down on the plains below, but he had allowed Gardas to go with Beatrice and Auric to scrambled around on the steep grassy slopes, casting cleansing spells to blast invading weeds off the white chalk surface. It had been a beautiful sunny day, full of the sound of skylarks’ song and Beatrice’s laughter. It was one of the best days of his life. And now, there were only four blackened scorch marks to show where the carvings had been. Who had worked all this destruction? How was it even possible to blacken chalk? And why?

A white-bearded wizard, evidently an inquisitor, motioned to Gardas to sit down on the Seat of Judgement. The stone chair clamped him in place – not sprouting tendrils as enchanted wood might have done, but simply ensuring that his hands and feet were suddenly encased in hollows in the stone (tight hollows, which pressed painfully on his sore wrists and ankles) and that there were stone bars across his waist and neck.

‘Gardas,’ began the inquisitor (not Slave Gardas or Wizard Gardas, or Azalar’s Gardas or Auric’s Gardas, or anything that might give him a clue to his current status), ‘you are charged with a campaign of war crimes and intimidation taking place over the past fourteen years, including multiple counts of mass murder of both wizards and commoners, multiple counts of destruction of property, one count of grievous bodily harm to a child, and one count of destroying a wizard’s magic. How do you plead?’

‘I can’t remember,’ said Gardas. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

‘You can’t remember, and yet you feel sorry?’ sneered the inquisitor. Gardas had an uncomfortable feeling that he had met this inquisitor before – maybe been on trial in front of this inquisitor – though he couldn’t remember when or why. He wanted to snap, ‘I meant I’m sorry I can’t answer your questions, you pompous git!’ but he couldn’t manage to get the words out. He often couldn’t say much, especially in front of his betters, which included practically everyone.

He noticed that the inquisitor’s robes were nearly as old and shabby as the second-hand shirt and trousers that Auric had found somewhere for Gardas. In fact, even though they were presumably in their best clothes for an important occasion, nearly everyone was dressed in rags. People Gardas recognised and knew were wizards, including some of his old teachers, wore a random mixture of wizards’ robes and commoners’ trousers or dresses – and it wasn’t just the female wizards wearing dresses, which implied that some of the men would have _liked_ to be still in robes, but no longer possessed them. Had he caused such widespread devastation that people no longer had sheep to shear or fields to grow flax in? 

When they’d come out here before, there had been sheep grazing on the hills, and the fields had been a patchwork of sky-blue flax flowers, silver-blue-green unripe wheat, blossoming bean-plants, and grass waiting to turn into hay, with hedgerows between them, and even a few small patches of woodland. They were mostly beeches, Beatrice had said, and had told him the legend of how beeches had come into existence thousands of years ago, when a young witch had fallen so much in love with the sun that she had turned herself into a tree in a misguided attempt to win his love, and how her human suitor had begged her not to leave him behind, so she had turned him into a boar who could eat the seeds at her feet. Auric had said, ‘That’s really sad,’ and Gardas, who hadn’t wanted to admit how much the story moved him, had snorted, ‘That’s stupid! When she loved a good man who loved her and wanted to marry her, why would she choose the sun, who _couldn’t_ marry her?’ Azalar had hexed him with a tongue-sticking spell for being disrespectful, but Beatrice had nodded seriously, and said, ‘Yes, it was a stupid decision to make. But lots of people have the problem of loving someone who can’t love them in that way, and can’t accept the friendship that their beloved could give them, or go on to find out who is the right person for them to marry.’

Now, everything was a blackened ruin, without even the beginnings of weeds thrusting through. It looked almost as though it had been attacked by a dragon. Gardas remembered a lesson on dragons once: how Black dragons were among the most dangerous variety, although they were smaller than blues, because their fire was so destructive; Blue dragons’ fire could burn and injure, but Black dragons’ fire could devastate land so that it was permanently cursed, or inflict injuries that could not be healed either by natural means, or by any human magic. Only the healing fire of a silvery Grey dragon, larger than any variety save the Golds, could undo a Black dragon’s curse. Perhaps Paul had been injured by a dragon? It would explain why no healer had restored him to normal.

‘Gardas! Are you paying attention?’ snapped the inquisitor.

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Gardas again.

‘As I was saying, before I or anyone else questions you any further, you need to drink this truth potion. I must remind the court that the defendant’s testimony will not necessarily give the true facts of what actually happened, but will reveal the truth as it appears to him. I must also remind everyone that those under the influence of a truth potion are easily distracted, and so it is important that nobody else calls out, or questions the defendant without my permission. Now, Gardas, are you ready?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Gardas managed, in a strangled grunt. A younger, female wizard lifted the cup of bitter potion to Gardas’s lips (he had known it would taste bitter, so had he been interrogated like this before?).

As Gardas drank, he began to realise that there was nothing really to worry about. After all, they were all his friends here, even if some of them were friends he’d never met. He grinned, his tongue lolling like a dog’s, as he got ready to tell his tale.


	2. Chapter 2

‘Do you remember how this boy came to lose the use of his arm?’ the inquisitor asked, indicating Paul.

‘No,’ said Gardas.

‘Or how he came to lose his magical powers?’

‘No! I didn’t even know he had, I mean – crap! It’s bad enough if he’s from a wizard family, they won’t know what to do with him if he’s suddenly a commoner, and if he’s a commoner – well, it’s not so bad if his parents are decent to him, I s’pose. At least he can go home to them. But if I hadn’t turned out to be a wizard and come to the Walled City, I’d have been dead by the time I was twelve, unless I managed to get away. Could’ve run away and lived on the streets, that’d be best. Kids in the potions farm got chopped up as soon as they were confirmed, mostly….’

‘Had you seen this boy before today?’

‘No…’ Gardas hesitated. ‘I sort of feel as though I have, only it’s like a dream that’s got broken. You know how it is with dreams? If someone wakes you up suddenly, the dream-shell cracks like an egg, and all the story gets spilt and there are just a few pictures, but if you don’t wake up soon enough, the shell gets too hard and it’s all sealed away, so you don’t remember anything. Well, I’ve sort of got a picture…’ He was starting to feel dizzy, remembering. If he had been standing up, he would have wanted to sit down, but he _was_ sitting, and it didn’t help. He took some slow, deep breaths to calm himself, and carried on. ‘It was… he was there and he was pale and looked sick, ‘cos his arm was all burnt, but he was alive and that was important, because he smelled like Beatrice. And I ought to be dead, I know that, because I’m a monster, but I’m not dead yet. Azalar is, though, he’s just a blackened chunk of charcoal on the ground. And then there’s a man coming up, older but I can smell that it’s Auric, and he’s got his wand, and I think, _now_ I’ll died, and it’ll all be all right. Only when I cay wup – wake up – I’m in a cowshed instead.’ Now he needed to _lie_ down, never mind sit. Instead, he took more long, slow breaths, counting in and out until he reached a hundred. Maybe they’d let him sleep soon.

‘Do you remember what happened just before all that?’ asked the inquisitor.

‘No.’

‘So, is there a gap in your memory?’

‘Yes, I told you that, you idiot!’

‘What’s the last thing you remember?’

At last, an easy question. ‘You asking me what’s the last thing I remember.’

Some of the crowd laughed, but the rest frowned at him as if he was trying to make a joke. The inquisitor looked as if he _wanted_ to frown, but instead just asked, ‘And how about the last thing before the gap in your memory?’

‘Uh – I was at school. In my fifth year, only I don’t rebemmer – remember – if I took fifth-year exams. I got to do duelling club, though. That was good.’

‘And do you remember a young lady called Beatrice Spinner?’

‘Yes, of course. She was an exchange student who came to our school that year. She was my friend.’

‘Your girlfriend?’

‘No, she was Auric’s girlfriend. She didn’t like Azalar at all, but you could see she and Auric loved each other, even when they argued. But she was my first real friend – I mean, Auric was all right, but he was kind like a good master, like the sort of master I wished I had instead of Azalar. Auric wouldn’t have splattered indelible stains all over his robes and made me stay up all night trying out spells to get them clean when I had loads of essays due in the next day. 

‘But Beatrice treated me like a normal person. I could talk to her without my throat getting all tied up, and she listened as if she was interested. She was very shocked when I told her about being a slave, but when I explained to her how it worked, and how I’d be free by the time I was twenty-five and already have seven years’ work experience before I had to look for somewhere to live, she said, “Oh. I suppose that’s not so different from my witch-apprenticeship, really, except that you know when you’re going to finish. Where I come from, a lot of girls decide to train as wizards, because they can study wizards’ magic at a normal school and go on to study wizardry at university, and they know when they’re going to graduate and they can still have a normal social life. A witch’s apprenticeship is a lot more hands-on, and we’re on call all the time, and I’m going to be an apprentice for as long as it takes, until Granny Flint thinks I’m ready and there’s a village that needs a witch.”

‘But then she said, “Only it’s still not fair if you have to spend all your time doing chores for Azalar now, and you’ve barely got time to do your homework, and no time to do anything else, like joining the duelling club. That way, neither of you is getting a full education, if you can’t practise duelling and Azalar isn’t learning to look after his own stuff.”

‘She got Auric to get Azalar to give me Saturday mornings off , which was when duelling club was – we’d learnt a bit in normal self-defence classes, and I’d always wanted to practise more. The first bout was for fifth-years, so I was in against Beatrice, and I was still wondering what to do in the first round and she turned my wand into a slow-worm while I was trying to decide, and she said, “You mustn’t pull your punches just because I’m a girl!” and so in the next round, I levitated her in the air and in the third round I made her hair catch fire.

‘I won all the bouts against other fifth-years, so they sent me up against the sixth-years, and then the seventh-years – Azalar and Auric. I made Azalar’s arms and legs dance the tarantella, and Auric thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, he said, “It was a year before I could defeat you, and Gardas manages it on the first try! Gardas, you’ve _got_ to be a warrior mage, you’re a natural!” And Beatrice said, “He hasn’t _got to_ – it’s up to him!” And Auric said, “No, I didn’t mean it like that. Gardas, what I meant was that you’re really, really good at duelling, and you _could_ do that as your career when you’re older, unless you want to be a healer or something else instead.”

‘But Azalar was furious, so when we’d finished the duel, he hexed me, because I wasn’t allowed to hex _him_ outside the duelling ring, but I was his slave so he could punish me whenever he chose. He made my bum glow red-hot, I don’t just mean it hurt, like when they used to smack me when I was little, I mean it actually burned through my underpants and then through my robes, but I didn’t notice, because I was duelling Auric now, and he was seriously good at it. I tried to make the bones in his wand-hand disappear, but I did the spell too hard and vanished half the bones in his body, and even his teeth. They had to carry him to the infirmary on a stretcher, but as they carried him off, he called, “Gardaff, you’re ge beft duellift I’ve ever feen!”

‘They didn’t take me to the infirmary, the school nurse said there were plenty of people with much worse injuries from the duelling, and mine would wear off in a bit. So I had to eat lunch standing up so that I didn’t burn through the bench, with my backside sticking out through the hole in my robes, but nobody laughed at me, because they all knew I could fight, now. I wanted to go and have a cold bath after lunch, but I couldn’t, because Azalar kept finding jobs for me to do until night, and by then I was ready to drop, and I had to sleep face-down on top of the blankets, and naked, so that I didn’t burn through anything, and my bum hurt so much that I couldn’t sleep for ages, but all the rest of me was cold, and then I burned my hand when I tried to rub it better after I was sure everyone was asleep, so when the spell on my backside wore off at midnight, my sore hand was keeping me awake instead. But I didn’t care, because duelling club was my favourite part of school, and I could go back and do it again next week, and forever.

‘Only I couldn’t straightaway, because Auric was in the infirmary for about a month while they regrew his bones, and he said that to teach me not to cast hexes I didn’t know how to cure, I had to come and help him study, as penance. He got Azalar to let me off all my normal chores, so now, every afternoon after school, Beatrice and I helped each other get our own homework done, and then we’d go and visit Auric and help him with his. We had to take turns reading his textbooks to him, because they were too heavy for him to hold, and he’d ask us if we knew what it meant, and if we couldn’t, he’d explain it, and then he dictated his essays to us, and did the same thing with those. Hah, and that _was_ Auric being kind! I didn’t even realise it then, because he pretended it was all a punishment and that he didn’t realise how much more interesting this was than cleaning Azalar’s boots, but it was because he knew I wasn’t getting good grades because Azalar never gave me much time to study, and he wanted me to know that I could be clever enough to understand seventh-year textbooks.

‘But anyway, when Auric was better and I couldn’t wait to get back to duelling club, it never happened because somehow, something always went wrong. I’d always get something wrong with me at the start of Saturday morning – maybe I’d sprout horns in the middle of breakfast and the nurse would take me off to the infirmary, or maybe I’d be in duelling club, waiting for my first bout, when I’d start vomiting toads. Sometimes it wore off by Saturday lunchtime and everyone laughed at me for being too scared to meet Azalar for a re-match, or sometimes I was unconscious until Monday morning, and then got better just in time to go to lessons and be told off for not having done any homework.

‘There was only one more time when I actually got to do any duelling. The head read off the list of rules, like no shapeshifting, which wasn’t something anyone below seventh-year knew how to do anyway, so I didn’t pay much attention. I won the first couple of bouts, and then I was about to go into the ring with Azalar, and I could feel my guts churning, and I thought, stuff it, I’ll beat him and _then_ go to the toilet. So I raised my wand, and just then I shat myself, and Azalar gave me this really patronising look and said, “It’s all right, Gardas, everyone has little accidents when they’re nervous,” and Beatrice shouted, “How dare you?” and jumped into the ring and slapped him in the face, and Azalar turned her into a snail and I thought he was about to tread on her, so _I_ shouted, “Don’t you dare!” and then – then it’s all a blank. Except…’

Except that if he thought, he could remember something about leathery wings flapping, and fiery breath, and a lashing, spiky tail. But he couldn’t into put words it, couldn’t think even sentences in, all confusing, deep breaths, need lie to down, _sleep_ need…


	3. Chapter 3

Gardas woke to find himself hurting. It was mostly his mouth – he seemed to have bitten his tongue and cheeks – but, as he moved his hands down under the bedclothes to pat around the rest of his body, he realised that his throat and around his waist felt bruised, too. His hands and feet were bandaged, and felt raw and painful. He didn’t know what he might have been doing to them. His head felt clogged with wool, but he thought that he had been encased in some kind of stone. Had he tried to fight his way out? Why would he have done that? And why bite his tongue?

Come to think of it, why was he in a bed, not lying on straw? And why were his hands loose to explore? He’d been – on trial? Had he been set free? The magic-restraining band around his neck had gone, so he must have been. Pity he didn’t have a wand, but until he got one – preferably more than one – he could brush up on his wandless magic. Something in his mind whispered, ‘ _Set the bed on fire!_ ’ He tried. It didn’t work. The more rational part of his brain woke up and suggested that it wouldn’t have been a very good idea, really, to be in a bed that was on fire, especially when he was feeling rotten and could barely walk. Why was he in a bed, anyway?

‘Gardas? Are you awake now?’ It was Auric’s voice.

‘Mmph – uh, yes, sir,’ Gardas managed, as well as he could with his sore tongue. He opened his eyes. The room he was in looked comfortable but anonymous, like a room in an inn. He was lying on a mattress on the floor, with sheets spread over it and a pillow under his head. The pillow was stained with a small pool of blood and drool, evidently supplied by Gardas. There were two bunk beds beside the mattress, a table with a jug of water and a basin, and a fireplace with a small cauldron hanging over it (but no fire lit at present), and a pack leaning against the bunks, but no sign of spell-books, ornaments, or other personal belongings. Gardas remembered Beatrice telling him that many senior witches lived as simply as possible, with few possessions of any kind, and nothing that couldn’t serve a mundane purpose as well as a magical one. Witches, she had boasted, had been flying brooms or mortars, and sailing sieves, for centuries before wizards caught onto the idea, but no witch would dream of buying a fancy new sports broom when she could persuade an ordinary broom to fly and could still also use it to sweep the floor. This room could have been the home of a very senior witch indeed.

‘Well, the good news is, you’ve been cleared,’ Auric said. ‘The court accepted that you’d been under a compulsion curse and weren’t responsible for any of your actions – or at least, not up to the point where you spared Paul’s life. That may have broken the spell.’

‘And Beatrice? Did I rescue Beatrice?’

Auric winced. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Is she dead? Did Azalar kill her? Did _I_ kill her?’ Gardas was terrified to ask, partly because he dreaded knowing the answers, and partly because thinking about the past seemed to make him ill, but he had to know.

‘No, she isn’t dead. She – went back to her own country, to finish her witch-training.’

‘As a snail?’

‘No, no – she wasn’t a snail for more than a few minutes before someone turned her back. But it’s best if you don’t think about any of that. You need time to heal – like when they were regrowing my bones, and I had to have my arms and legs immobilised until they’d finished growing back. That was impressive magic, for a fifth-year. I’m just glad you didn’t manage to vanish my ribs and spine while you were at it!’

‘I don’t remember anything I studied after fifth year,’ said Gardas. ‘Does that mean I’ll need to do the course again? Or are the spells still in me, even if I don’t remember learning them?’

‘No, and no,’ said Auric sadly. ‘You were expelled in your fifth year, and – well, I told you that the court agreed that you were under a compulsion curse, and didn’t deserve punishment. But nevertheless, you’re not exactly popular around here, and people felt that anyone who would submit to a compulsion for fourteen years before beginning to fight it, and who obviously had vast and untrained magical powers, was someone who didn’t have enough self-control to use them responsibly. So – you’re an exile, starting as soon as you’re well enough to travel, and your magic was removed while you were asleep.’

Gardas didn’t know how to respond. It was too much to take in at once. Nobody wanted him. He wasn’t a wizard. He couldn’t go back to the Walled City because he wasn’t a wizard, and he couldn’t even live in the shacks that surrounded it, because he was an exile. He didn’t know anywhere else, or any other way of living. Auric hadn’t been able to protect him, beyond convincing the court to spare his life, or hadn’t wanted to.

He tried to focus on the simplest question. ‘How did I fall asleep? Did someone stun me?’

‘Well, yes, but only to stop you hurting yourself. You were having some kind of seizure, and thrashing against the Seat of Judgement, and there was no way to get you out while you were doing it. So I stunned you – I was terrified that I’d killed you, when you stopped breathing, but apparently that happens anyway, with seizures. I laid you on your side until you started breathing again, and then you started to stagger up, so I helped you up to my room to sleep it off. The innkeeper went on ahead of us, and pulled a mattress onto the floor for you, so that you couldn’t fall out of bed and hurt yourself. You fell asleep straightaway, and didn’t even wake while we were bandaging your cuts and grazes – don’t worry, they’re not serious. But anyway, I sat with you to make sure you were all right, so I didn’t hear the rest of your court case. But when Paul and the inquisitor came back to announce the verdict, I thought I’d better stun you again before taking your magic out, just to make sure it didn’t hurt. How are you feeling now, anyway?’

‘All right. Just tired.’

‘Well, that’s understandable. Paul was conscious when his magic was pulled out of him, and he said it was agonising – much worse than the injury to his arm.’

‘Did I do those?’

‘It’s best if you don’t think about it. It wasn’t really _you_ doing it, just Azalar using you as a tool. But that’s all over now, anyway. Your new life begins here. If you like, I could brew you a calming potion to help you not to worry…’

‘NO!’ screamed Gardas, terrified. He wasn’t sure why he was terrified, but he was sure that someone – Azalar? – had given him a calming potion that… something very bad… he was beginning to get dizzy, he didn’t know, he couldn’t remember… deep breaths, just breathe in and out, count to a hundred, don’t think… that was better. Maybe needed to sleep a bit more.

‘I’m sorry, that was tactless,’ Auric said. ‘I don’t blame you for being wary, after everything you’ve been through, and I won’t do anything more to you without your permission. Well, unless it’s an emergency, like in the stone chair this afternoon. Is that a deal?’

‘Yes, master,’ muttered Gardas, as he didn’t see what he could do to stop Auric from doing things to him without his permission, and couldn’t be sure what Auric might choose to define as ‘an emergency’.

‘I’m not your master,’ said Auric. ‘Azalar kept you working for him much longer than the terms of your contract allowed – considering you didn’t get more than five years of schooling, you should have been free at twenty-one, never mind twenty-five. Well, you’re a free man now, at any rate. You can choose where you want to go, what you want to do.’

‘Yes, ma- sir,’ whispered Gardas miserably. He didn’t know how to choose. He had never so much as selected which of a plate of cakes to take, or what clothes to put on; the most he could expect was to have food at all, and clothes that, if he was lucky, might keep him warm. Azalar had told him what subjects to select to study in the third year. Beatrice had told him – well, suggested, but he was hardly going to disagree with anything Beatrice said – that it was worth joining the duelling club. And yet – if Azalar had been controlling him, presumably he must have chosen to kill Azalar and spare Paul’s life, and he didn’t remember how he’d done it. And now he had to decide where he wanted to live, which could be anywhere except the only country he’d ever known, and what he wanted to be, which could be anything except a wizard, the only job he had any training for.

‘If it’s any help,’ said Auric, ‘I was thinking of emigrating to Cideria.’

‘Beatrice’s country? Are you going to get back together with her?’

‘I don’t know. I’d love to, if she’ll have me, but I don’t know whether she’ll want me. She might think I’m a coward, deserting the Downs when they need wizards to help rebuild, but – well, considering I’m Azalar’s cousin, I’m scarcely more popular than you are. And I need to visit Cideria anyway, to take Paul to be with his mother.’

‘Who is his mother?’

‘Beatrice.’

‘Oh. So, did you…?’

‘No. We didn’t. I’m not Paul’s father. Beatrice was – very young when she had Paul, barely sixteen, and she didn’t feel she was ready to bring up a baby. Paul was adopted by a couple in the plains of the Downs country – good, responsible people. But, well, they died a couple of years ago, and I’ve been taking care of Paul since then, but now that the war’s over, I think it’s best if I bring him to Beatrice. From what she’s said, society isn’t segregated in Cideria the way it is here, with the wizards in the Walled City and everyone else outside, so it might be a better place for Paul to grow up now that he’s lost his magic. It could be good for you, too, if you want to come there with us. And they’ve got good healers there – hex therapists, they call them, the ones who specialise in helping people who’ve been afflicted by spells. They might be able to help you with the after-effects of your curse.’

‘Could they give me back my memory? And stop me having seizures?’

Auric hesitated. ‘They might. I don’t know. Would you like to try?’

‘Yes, please. And – do you think Beatrice would let me see her again? Or will she be angry with me for hurting Paul?’

‘I think she could well be angry with you for things you did when you were under Azalar’s spell,’ said Auric. ‘But she might forgive you. Do you want to risk it?’

‘Yes, please. When do we leave? Now?’

‘In the morning, I think. You need rest, and I need to brew another batch of potion for Paul, to protect against infection in his arm. But if you can get through today and tonight without any more seizures, I think people would be glad if we left tomorrow. This inn is providing shelter for lots of people who’ve lost their homes, and we’re taking up a whole room with just the three of us. In the meantime, are you hungry?’

Gardas hadn’t even thought about it, but – ‘Yes.’

‘I’ll go down to the kitchen and see what I can order. It might be diplomatic if I bring yours up on a tray. Paul can eat upstairs or down, as he chooses.’

Gardas wondered what food there might be. In prison, Auric had brought whatever he could, mainly bread and sometimes dried meat, but here he might be able to celebrate his freedom with an actual hot meal. He had visions of roast mutton, cabbage and carrots and mashed turnips with butter, or maybe even roast parsnips.

What Auric brought up was a tray with a mug of ale and a bowl of pease porridge: peas, beans, lentils, oats, and barley, plus a plate of broken bits of bread. ‘I’m afraid I can’t stay to eat with you,’ he said. ‘The landlord’s got me serving customers. They’re having trouble eking the food supplies out, so I’m helping things along a bit.’

Ah, yes. The multiplication spell had been the first magic Gardas had ever learnt to do, before he even knew it _was_ magic he was doing. One of the other kids in the potions farm had been sent to bed with no supper for refusing to learn her catechism, and Gardas had felt sorry for her, so he’d sneaked in to bring her some of his bread and cheese, and somehow they had each wound up with more bread and cheese than Gardas had been given to start with. At school, later on, he had learnt that it was called either ‘the beggar’s spell’, because it only worked when you really, really needed it, or ‘the giver’s spell’, because it only worked when you were sharing food with others. Some said it wasn’t magic at all but a miracle, a gift of the gods, because ignorant, untutored people (as Gardas had been then) could sometimes do it if they needed to, but even the most skilled wizards were unable to make it work predictably and consistently. Gardas had long stopped believing in any gods by the age of eleven, having seen what the gods allowed to happen to the many variously devout children in the potions farm. Apparently you had to be either magical or a saint to work the multiplication spell/miracle, which now ruled him out on both counts.

Still, Auric was good at it, so they probably wouldn’t starve on the journey. It was a pity there hadn’t been any meat or fresh vegetables for Auric to multiply, but the ale washed it down nicely. Gardas ate and drank eagerly (fortunately, the bandages around his hands left his fingers free enough to grasp a mug-handle or a spoon), gave a contented burp, and was just about to fall asleep when he heard a faint mewing sound from just outside the room.

He heaved himself upright and stumped over to open the door. Outside lay a basket containing a baby who didn’t look more than three or four months old. It had a ridge of hair sprouting along the middle of its head which looked grey – not a mixture of black and white hairs, like the hair of an older person, but uniformly ash-grey. The child reminded him of a kitten – an effect enhanced by its bright golden eyes. Its grizzling grew to a full-bodied wail.

‘Hey, hey,’ Gardas soothed, scooping the baby up and holding it to him. ‘D’you want your mum? How did you get here, anyway?’

He caught sight of a scrap of paper lying in the basket. It read: ‘BEAST, SHE IS YOURS.’


	4. Chapter 4

The wooden stairs creaked ominously as Gardas made his way downstairs. He still felt shaky enough to want to clutch at the hand-rail, nerve-racking as it felt to keep only arm cradling the baby. He composed a mental list of things he would need. There had been nothing in the basket except the baby, the blanket she was wrapped in (she had nothing on underneath, not even a nappy), and the note.

The inn was crowded with people either sitting or standing to eat the pease-porridge that Auric was still ladling out, or coming in to collect a bowlful and going away. Paul sat hunched on a stool in a corner, his bowl balanced on his lap, untouched.

Everyone turned to look as Gardas approached, then quickly turned away as if they couldn’t bear to look at him for long. ‘Thought that creature was supposed to be out of these parts,’ an old woman muttered.

‘It’s nearly nightfall!’ said Auric indignantly. ‘You saw how ill he was – can’t you allow him one night to recover before we set off?’

‘Leave him here tonight, there might not be an inn tomorrow,’ said a man with a scrubby beard. ‘Screw this, I can sleep out for one night.’

‘How many times? I’ve removed his magic,’ said Auric wearily. ‘He’s no more dangerous than any commoner, now.’

‘Commoner, is it?’ snapped the old woman who had spoken first. ‘Want to know what we commoners think of wizards?’

‘That they’re a dab hand at making food go a long way,’ said a young woman with a face that might have been pretty if it hadn’t been so thin.

‘Sir – I mean, Auric?’ said Gardas, trying to make himself heard above the baby, who was now crying loudly, arching her back and turning her head from side to side, as if trying to work out why her new mummy didn’t have breasts. ‘Do you have anything you can transfigure into a baby’s feeding bottle? And can you transfigure some sheep’s or cows’ milk into human milk?’

There was a mixture of intakes of breath, snorting, and a few manic laughs. ‘You think we’ve got any sheep or cows left?’ snorted a grey-haired man who looked as though he might be a farmer.

‘Or that we’d give milk to you?’ added the old woman.

‘To the baby,’ Gardas corrected her. ‘Want me to let her starve?’

‘A lot you’d care!’ snorted the scrubby-bearded man. ‘That one isn’t the result of a love-match, I’d bet.’

Everyone snorted at the absurdity of the idea of a woman being attracted to Gardas.

‘She’s a baby!’ Gardas pointed out. ‘I don’t remember what happened, but it’s not her fault. She’s mine, and she needs feeding.’

‘And who’d give you charge of a baby?’ growled the old woman.

‘Whoever left her outside my door did,’ said Gardas. ‘I can’t offer her much – I’ve got no job, no home…’

‘Who has?’ called someone, to general bitter laughter.

‘Well, if her mum wants her back, she can have her,’ said Gardas, wondering whether the baby’s mother was here. Or had she somehow managed to slip in, scurry upstairs with a basket of baby, and disappear without anyone noticing?

‘Oh, very generous!’ said a big middle-aged woman who looked as though she had once been stout and now just had sparse flesh stretched across big bones. ‘Force yourself on some girl, get her with child, and then expect her to bring up your monster for you!’

‘What do you want me to do, then?’ Gardas demanded.

The grey-bearded farmer leaned closer. ‘Get your wicked tail out of here, that’s what. And that goes for you, too, wizard – bribing us with food won’t make us forget, you know.’

‘No, not once you’re full!’ called Paul from the corner.

‘We’re leaving at first light,’ said Auric. ‘Gardas won’t bother you any more tonight. Come on, Gardas, upstairs,’ and he pointed Gardas up towards the bedrooms with a gesture somewhere between coaxing a reluctant child to go to bed and ordering a dog to its basket. ‘You, too, Paul – we’ve got a long journey tomorrow,’ he added, in a friendlier tone. Paul followed behind Auric, pointedly putting as much distance between himself and Gardas as possible.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Auric when they were upstairs. ‘Now – first things first. Is your mug still up here? Good.’

Gardas realised that Auric still had his own mug in his hand – an actual glass mug, not earthenware like Gardas’s – and that it was still half-full of ale. Auric set his drink down, drew his wand from his leave, cast a quick scouring spell to sterilise Gardas’s clay mug, and then turned it into a clay jug in the shape of a fat little dragon, with four clay paws supporting it, a head for a handle, and a spout in the shape of a tail. Its wings cupped around a wooden plug, which Auric removed before pouring his ale, a little at a time, into the pot. The liquid, as he poured it, turned from brown to creamy white.

‘You can do that?’ said Paul, impressed.

‘It works with any watery drink,’ said Auric. He still had half a mug of ale, so clearly he had been using a multiplying spell at the same time as the transfiguration.

‘Don’t worry, now,’ said Gardas. ‘Dinner’s coming.’

The baby’s hunger-crying had now changed to high-pitched screaming. Was she suffering from wind, or just in pain from being hungry? At any rate, she didn’t seem in a mood to try anything new – especially having a terracotta spout poked into her mouth in place of the expected nipple.

Gardas pulled her closer to him, and said, ‘ _Hush, hatchling._ ’ The baby relaxed at once, chuckled happily, and fed from the clay dragon-bottle as if she had been doing it all her life.

‘What did you say to her?’ said Paul, astonished.

‘I just told her to hush, that’s all. Can’t drink if she’s yelling, can she?’

‘Yes, but – what language was that?’

‘Just talking normally.’

‘You weren’t.’

‘I was.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Auric. ‘She seems happier now, anyway. I didn’t know you were so good with babies, Gardas. How did you know she couldn’t drink cows’ milk?’

‘Too young. Three months, four at most.’

‘Yes, but – most people think milk is just milk. How do you know so much about babies?’

‘There were lots, where I was before your aunt and uncle bought me.’

The baby broke off feeding, grunted and squirmed before voiding her bowels. Paul grimaced. ‘At least she’s healthy,’ Gardas said, enjoying the boy’s discomfiture. He laid her on his mattress, the cleaner end of the blanket under her bottom. ‘Have you got anything I can use as a nappy? Or anything to wipe her with?

Auric cleaned the blanket with a purification spell, then tipped water from the jug on the table into the cauldron, cast a warming spell to raise it to lukewarm, and dipped his handkerchief in the warm water. Gardas cleaned the baby’s nether regions, Auric vanished the dirt from the handkerchief, and they repeated the process until she seemed clean and comfortable.

‘Couldn’t you just vanish the poo off her to start with?’ asked Paul.

The two adults stared at him. ‘Have you ever tried purifying your hands?’ Auric asked.

Paul winced at the memory. ‘Yeah, I did once. I’d spilt a potion that dyed them, and washing with soap didn’t do any good. They stung for days afterwards.’

‘Right. Imagine how that feels on a baby’s bum,’ said Gardas. ‘We need some proper nappies for her, anyway.’ He regarded the bandages on his hands and feet. ‘I’m not sure I need these.’

‘Probably not,’ Auric agreed. He unwound them to reveal bruises and grazes, but not enough bloodshed to have left more than small spots on the fabric. He cast a quick healing spell on Gardas’s hands and feet, purified the bandages, transfigured two of them into thick, absorbent enough material to wrap around the baby’s nether regions, a third into a warm, soft dress, and the last into a bonnet and a pair of bootees. Next, he found a nail and a small coin in his pocket, which he transfigured into two pins. ‘We can give her a proper bath before you wrap her up, if I change the shape of the cauldron a bit,’ he offered.

‘Really?’ breathed Gardas, struck by this luxury.

‘Well, _duh!_ ’ snapped Paul. ‘I learned to do that in first year! It takes way less magic than changing beer into milk!’

Yes, Gardas had learned to work spells like that at eleven, too. It was just that, _before_ the age of eleven, he didn’t remember ever having seen a bath, and Auric had done too much for him already today. It wasn’t as if he, Gardas, could do Auric any favours in return.

The baby, clearly, was not impressed by the honour she was being offered. She screamed and flailed wildly as Gardas lifted her off the mattress and shuffled forward on his knees to lift her into the newly-reshaped bath.

‘It’s all right,’ said Gardas. ‘It’s not a cauldron any more, it’s just to wash you. The water’s all nice and warm, you’ll like it.’ The baby kicked frantically, and began trying to pull her own ears off. ‘ _Stop troubling, cubling,_ ’ said Gardas, in the same voice that had worked earlier. ‘ _No flapping, no slapping. Going for a splashly-splish, to catch yourself a dish of fish. In the water lash your tail, you can swallow ship and whale._ ’

‘You’re talking that weird language again,’ said Paul. ‘Is that a magic spell? Magic won’t work now we’re not wizards, you know.’

‘Works on this one,’ said Gardas. ‘ _Down at the bottom of the deep blue sea, pirate treasure calls to me, sunken galleons: one, two, THREE!_ ’ The baby laughed delightedly.

‘It’s just baby-talk,’ said Auric, a little too quickly and insistently. ‘Most parents realise they know it, when they’ve got a baby to look after. Probably the people who looked after Gardas when he was little talked to him like that – does that sound right, Gardas?’

Gardas said nothing. He didn’t remember much about his early childhood, but from what he could remember, he didn’t recall adults bothering to talk to him or the other children at all, apart the priests of assorted religions who came to give ‘their’ children religious instruction. Of course, old Lankin, who ran the potions farm, hadn’t been interested in saving children’s souls, all the kids knew _that_. But there were plenty of dark magic potions, brewed either by wizards exiled from the Walled City or secretly within the city itself, which called for human body parts – and not just from birth-strangled babes, but from people of at least three different ethnicities and religions, which required sacrificing children old enough to have learnt their creeds. Gardas had made a point of telling everyone, as soon as he was old enough to talk, that he didn’t believe in any gods – though for all he knew, there could be a spell calling for ‘atheist’s guts, agnostic’s spleen’.

In the meantime, the bathwater was cooling, and the baby began to shiver. Gardas lifted her out, dried her on the piece of cloth that he hadn’t designated to serve first as a nappy, and pinned the other one around her. He dressed the little girl, wrapped her again in her blanket, and held her on his lap. ‘Can you clean my pillow and put it in her basket?’ he asked Auric. ‘She could do with something soft to lie on.’

Auric purified the stain, and laid the pillow across the bottom of the basket – not at one end to rest the baby’s head on, but ready to cushion the whole length of her body. She was yawning, obviously desperate for sleep but not sure how to find it. He tried [singing her to sleep](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tih4bFSzrbE&feature=youtu.be&autoplay=1):

‘ _Easy, now hatchling, your young wings are furled._

_Your tail and your neck round your body lie curled._

_The tail-biting serpent encircles the world,_

_And it’s safe for a dragon to sleep._

_‘Easy, my spiny, the knights are long dead._

_The burglars who came for your treasure are fled._

_By no potion-hunter shall your blood be shed,_

_So it’s safe for a dragon to sleep.’_

The baby yawned once more and fell asleep. Her breath felt surprisingly hot against Gardas’s hand – and after Auric’s healing, he couldn’t put this down to his skin being over-sensitive. He knew now why he had sung to her what he had, and why they had to leave as soon as possible, before anyone should realise what she was, and the refrain of the song prove to be a hollow promise.

Dragons were even more valuable potions ingredients than were people from religious minorities.


	5. Chapter 5

None of them slept much that night. The baby kept waking and crying, not always hungry, but frightened and lonely in this strange place. Gardas could soothe her by picking her up and giving her a cuddle and speaking Dragonese to her, and she might even fall asleep, but woke again as soon as he tried to put her back in her basket. After the first few tries, he abandoned any pretence of sleep and sat with her on his lap, trying to choose a name for her. The only names he could think of were for her dragon side – Neliria, Kheshaita, Lilothyra – and she might prefer to name her own dragon, if it didn’t fully emerge until she was older. He tried not to think about _why_ she was part dragon, or how his own transformations had happened. Remembering would only make him ill again, and he couldn’t afford to get ill, now that he had a daughter to look after.

It seemed to be all right to wonder about his daughter’s own future, though. Perhaps her dragon would never fully emerge, and she would just grow into a human woman – perhaps a beautiful woman, even if her grey hair and golden eyes marked her as unusual. He hoped she could live a normal life, married to a good man – Gardas resisted the temptation to choose his future son-in-law’s profession and status, and simply wished for a good and wise man who would appreciate her and make her happy. He pictured her, nursing her own babies at her breast instead of from a clay spout, and eventually growing into a cuddly old granny whose grey hair was no longer anything remarkable.

That would be a happy ending. On the other hand, if she _did_ grow into a dragon – well, the Grey dragons had healing fire that could cure even the curse of a Black dragon’s fire. Perhaps the daughter might cure Paul’s wound that her father had inflicted – if Paul was willing to let another dragon near him, and if he hadn’t lost his arm by then. Perhaps she could even return to the Downs to heal the blight on the land – if the people hadn’t all starved or left by then. Or perhaps she would resent being expected to atone for her father’s sins.

In the meantime, she needed looking after. With only one spare nappy, and no magical powers to purge the wet or dirty one, Gardas put off changing her until she started to complain, but when Auric was awake anyway, he called on the wizard’s help. Gardas tried to remember what they had done in the potions farm to prevent babies getting nappy rash, or to treat those who did. As far as he could remember, the answer was usually, ‘nothing’, with the result that the house was full of the noise of miserable, crying babies. Lankin certainly wasn’t going to pay for the expensive magical salves that wizard families used, like the ones made of lavender oil or plantain oil that Gardas had later learnt to make in school. Sometimes Gardas and the other older children had stolen from the larder and used vinegar mixed with water to wash nappies or wipe sore bottoms, or even made salves from egg-whites or oatmeal. Of course, Lankin had beaten the thieves when he caught them (or if he didn’t catch them, punished everyone who was old enough to walk and _might_ have been the thief), but he didn’t always notice mild pilfering. After all, if they were lucky enough to have eggs, whoever was on kitchen duty could always separate the eggs and put all the yolks and _some_ of the whites into the batter, and smuggle a bit of egg-white away. Now, Gardas wondered whether they would be able to beg or buy any ingredients from the inn kitchen before leaving – if there was any food to spare. Or pick herbs to make salves as they travelled – if there were even any herbs still growing.

A few times, the baby cried with hunger, and he fed her from the clay jug standing beside his mattress. Auric had put a modified multiplication spell on the milk, so that there would always be enough as she sucked from the spout, but only a little in the bottom of the jug, so that it wouldn’t slosh about too much and spill easily. He had also cast a preservation spell attached to the jug itself, so that the milk would stay fresh as long as it was in the jug but become digestible as soon as it was swallowed, and to prevent the traces of milk and dribble on the spout from turning sour. Gardas remembered that milk had been something else they’d used as a salve, back when he was a child.

Lying on the lower bunk, Paul slept badly, waking whenever the baby cried or Gardas talked above a whisper. When the boy woke, it woke Auric in turn, who clambered down from the upper bunk to check Paul’s forehead in case he had a fever, and to ask him whether he was all right (eliciting a grunt or a sarcastic ‘What do you think?’), whether he was in pain (eliciting a sulky ‘No!’), or whether he was having bad dreams (no response, so presumably yes). As the only wizard present, Auric then dutifully checked whether Gardas needed any help with the baby, before climbing back to his bunk.

Well before dawn, everyone gave up trying to sleep, got up to breakfast on bread left over from yesterday’s supper, and began packing. Auric had somehow managed to get hold of three backpacks, plus socks and boots large enough for Gardas, a small cauldron, a packet of assorted healing herbs, some more spare nappies for the baby and spare dressings for Paul’s injured arm, and…

‘Isn’t this the wrong tent?’ said Paul. ‘I’m sure ours was bigger.’

‘I had to trade ours,’ said Auric apologetically. ‘There were so many other things we needed – and after all, we don’t really need a magic tent with a four-bedroom house inside, when so many people here are homeless.’

‘So, how many bedrooms is this one? Three? Two?’

‘It’s a commoner’s tent,’ said Auric wearily. ‘It’s just a set of animal skins sewn together which hang over some wooden sticks that hold it up. It does have another bit of leather that we can lay on the ground to stop us getting drenched with dew,’ he added, as if this might make it seem more appealing.

‘Can you put it up by magic?’

‘I haven’t tried,’ said Auric. ‘I think we need to practise putting it up by hand a few times, so that I understand how it fits together, before I can tell the magic what to do.’

‘Great. A commoner’s tent, because I don’t deserve to sleep in a proper tent any more,’ sighed Paul.

Auric turned on him angrily. ‘Young man, I’ve had enough of your behaviour over the past few days!’ he snapped. ‘I know it’s hard, losing your magic and the use of your arm, but Gardas has lost his magic and his memory, he has seizures, he’s been under a compulsion curse for the past fourteen years, he’s undergone the humiliation of being publicly questioned with a truth potion, and now he’s having to come to terms with the fact that everyone hates him for things he can’t remember doing. You’ve lost your family, but Gardas never even knew his parents in the first place – the life he lived up until the age of eleven was so horrible that becoming Azalar’s slave was an improvement! And I know you’ve got ample reason to hate Gardas, but he’s as much Azalar’s victim – more a victim – than you are. Considering that he doesn’t remember anything about the past fourteen years, in terms of life experience that makes him sixteen years old – only a few years older than you. But ever since getting out of prison, he’s been trying to get to grips with being a grown man and a father, while you’ve done nothing but sulk.

‘I love you, Paul. I love you for yourself, and I love you because you’re the son of the woman I fell in love with and…’

‘I don’t want to know!’ Paul snarled.

‘And a man who was a good friend of mine once,’ Auric continued imperturbably. ‘I’m not going to stop loving you, and I can’t ask you to stop hating Gardas all at once. But I can ask you to be as nice to him as you would be if he was someone you liked.’

‘Does he have to be nice to me?’ muttered Paul.

‘Gardas, you’re a free adult and I can’t tell you that you have to do anything. But can I ask you, for my sake, to be as kind and helpful to Paul as to your own daughter?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Gardas said. ‘Uh – is there anything I can help you with, Paul?’

‘I can manage!’ snapped Paul, who had been sitting around in his underpants, and now began hurriedly getting dressed, using his left hand to coax his shirt-sleeve over his injured right arm, and buttoning up his shirt and trousers with surprising skill. Finally, he stuck his feet into his boots and said, ‘Uh, Auric, can you help me with my laces?’

‘I’m busy packing the tent,’ Auric pointed out. ‘Gardas might help if you asked him nicely, though.’

Paul grimaced. ‘Gardas – will you tie my bootlaces – please?’ he ground out through clenched teeth.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Gardas blandly. Leaving the baby to investigate her own fingers, he knelt down and fastened the boy’s boots.

‘It’s nearly sunrise,’ said Auric. ‘Looks like good walking weather, too.’

‘Walking?’ repeated Paul. ‘You mean – you sold the brooms, too? Both of them?’

‘They wouldn’t work for you or Gardas now,’ Auric pointed out. ‘And wizards flying to buy in food from outside will need them.’

Paul said nothing, but only looked pointedly at Gardas. Gardas could see what that look meant: without him and the baby, Auric could easily have flown _one_ broom with Paul hanging on behind him. If they hadn’t had someone as universally hated as Gardas with them, they could have sold their brooms to wizards going to Cideria on condition that the wizards gave them and their luggage a lift there. Without an ex-dragon war criminal and a baby were-dragon, they might have been welcome to stay in any inn, and therefore wouldn’t have needed to camp. If Gardas had _still_ been a dragon, they could have flown on him – but of course, when he was a dragon, he had been too dangerous for them to control, and now that he had lost his magic, he would no longer be able to transform into a dragon. Everything was his fault. Gardas backed away to his side of the room, wrapped the baby in her blanket and laid her in her basket, and strapped on the largest of the backpacks, before standing upright, pack behind him and basket in his arms.

‘Have you chosen a name for her?’ Auric asked.

‘Couldn’t think of one for the human part of her,’ Gardas admitted.

‘How about Perdita?’ Auric suggested. ‘It means “lost”, after all.’

Gardas wasn’t convinced that this made it the right name. He hadn’t lost his daughter, but found her – and he was fairly sure that her mother hadn’t so much lost her as deliberately got rid of her. But still… ‘Like the princess in the story?’ he suggested.

‘Exactly,’ said Auric.

‘What story?’ said Paul.

‘I’ll tell you on the road,’ said Auric. ‘It’s time we were off, now.’

So they set off in the grey pre-dawn, after Auric had left some gold coins in their room to pay their way, and Auric explained as they walked:

‘It was a story Beatrice told us, about how Cideria came to be unified as one country. It used to be two separate kingdoms that got on well with each other. Well, the king of the eastern side had a very happy life. He was happily married, with a healthy little boy and another child on the way. His best friend was king of the country to the west, and his wife got on well with his friend as well. In fact – for want of any real problems to worry about, he convinced himself that his wife was getting on all too well with his friend, that they must be having an affair, and that her child was illegitimate. So he ordered his friend out of his kingdom at once, and had his wife thrown into prison and sentenced to death. The executioner came back shortly afterwards and reported that the deed was done. The king was so overwhelmed by despair that he couldn’t face going to play with his son as usual, knowing that the boy was sure to ask, “Where’s Mummy?” So his son became ill with grief and confusion that both his parents seemed to have vanished from his life and no-one could tell him when things would be back to normal. He died soon afterwards, and by then the king had started to realise that he had imagined everything: that neither his wife nor his friend had ever dreamed of betraying him, and that he had lost his wife, both his children, his friend, peace with his neighbouring kingdom, and his honour, all at once. He grieved bitterly for what he had done, and learned to become a wiser king and not to jump to conclusions. In time, his friend forgave him, and even consoled him, knowing that what he had done had been the result of a moment of madness, and that no punishment could be worse than having to live with the knowledge that he had killed his wife and children.

‘Well, of course, the executioner hadn’t really killed the young queen at all. He smuggled her away and hid her in a convent. All the same, she was still afraid that her husband might catch up with her and kill her baby daughter after all, so she agreed to let a servant take the baby over to the western kingdom and find foster-parents for her. Unfortunately, on his journey, the servant got lost in the dark and accidentally took a short cut through a farmyard, where the farmer’s fiercest pig, a ferocious old stud boar with tusks as terrible as a wild boar’s, was allowed to patrol like a guard-dog. The servant tripped and fell, and the boar gored him to death, but he managed to arch his body over the baby and protect her until he was dead. When the boar lost interest, the baby managed to crawl out from under her dead protector and into the sty of one of the sows who had a litter of piglets. When the farmer came to feed his pigs the next morning, he found a beautiful little girl suckling among the piglets, and so he brought her inside, gave her a wash, and called her – of course – Perdita.

‘Well, Perdita grew up happily enough on the farm, and by the time she was sixteen, she had a boyfriend – not one of the local lads, but a stranger who’d come to the harvest dance and had danced with her all evening…’

‘Let me guess – he was the only son of the king of the western kingdom?’ interrupted Paul.

‘Paul! You shouldn’t interrupt,’ scolded Auric. ‘But yes, it was that sort of story. Perdita, her father and her mother were all reunited, Perdita and her prince got married, and as they were each the only living heir in their families, the kingdom was united when their fathers died. Perdita’s first action as queen was to open a refuge for exiled princesses, and her second was to rule that everyone, before having children, should study and take an exam to qualify for a parenting licence, to demonstrate that they were sane enough not to accuse their spouses without evidence, and responsible enough to care for their children whatever they thought of their spouses. And such has been the law in Cideria from that day to this.’

‘So – I’d need a licence to look after my Perdita?’ said Gardas.

‘I suppose so,’ said Auric.

‘Then who looks after her when I’m studying for my licence?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Auric. ‘Still, we’ll work it out when we get there.’

‘Burn that bridge when we come to it?’ Gardas suggested.

‘Or possibly bridge that burn,’ said Auric. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll manage.’


	6. Chapter 6

They trudged all day in the hot July sun, mostly along the old high road over the hills. Even scorched and disfigured, the Downs landscape was as magnificent as Gardas remembered from when they had come up here as teenagers. He didn’t seem to have blighted the whole country – much of it was still green, and there were even towns, or rather, small villages of stone cottages surrounded by refugees’ tents. However, most of the major towns, including the Walled City of Wizards, were mere incinerated ruins, and the few patches of woodland that the Downs had once possessed were now gone.

Several times an hour, they passed other travellers, with packs like theirs or handcarts. Neither Gardas nor Paul felt like talking, so it was left to Auric to exchange polite greetings with them, ask them where they were going, and wish them well, and, in answer to their enquiries, explain that he was taking Paul to be with his mother, and escorting Gardas into exile and the care of a hex therapist in Cideria. The other travellers, mainly families with children, were mostly seeking a better life in – well, somewhere further off than Cideria, maybe Ottery or even Kernow – though some were simply planning to spend a few months working to bring in the Ciderian harvest, and come back with food and supplies before winter set in. They generally questioned Auric about what precautions the Ciderian authorities took to keep criminally insane were-dragons under control. Gardas stared down at his boots while these conversations went on, trying not to look dangerous.

‘Why’s everyone leaving now?’ Paul asked, when they had some time to themselves. ‘I thought this was when things started to get better.’

‘But this is when people can leave,’ Auric pointed out. ‘The Downs have been under a quarantine spell for the past ten years.’

‘A what?’ said Paul.

‘When a particularly evil Dark Lord or Dark Lady takes control of a country, wizards in neighbouring lands can create a barrier to prevent anyone from getting in or out. It means the Dark Lord can’t expand his power, and if the people being oppressed can’t flee as refugees, they have to work to overthrow the tyrant.’

‘But no-one can send them any help from outside,’ pointed out Paul.

‘Not from neighbouring countries, no. Sometimes visitors from other worlds have managed to help – or perhaps their being able to get in is a sign that the tyrant’s powers are already weakening. I read one account of a country where nearly all the inhabitants were non-human – sapient animals, fauns, dwarves and so on – and even their god always took the form of an animal, but they had a tradition that their ruler should be a human. So I’ve always wondered whether the Dark Lady there created her own barrier from within, so that, as long as she looked nearly enough human, and her subjects had never seen an actual human to compare her with, enough of them would either accept her as human and therefore respect her as their queen, or simply regard humans as purely mythical. If the dissidents had been able to cross over the border into a human-majority country – and persuade the humans there to regard them as people rather than as dinner – they’d probably have selected the first sympathetic human they encountered as their king, and asked him to lead an army to liberate them.’

‘I suppose you can’t blame people for wanting to leave now they can,’ Paul conceded. ‘This is a grotty sort of place to spend the rest of our lives.’

‘At least it’s not full of nettles,’ said Gardas.

‘Nettles don’t like blighted ground,’ Auric pointed out.

Gardas fell silent – after all, it was his fault the land was blighted. He mustn’t try to remember now, just keep putting one foot in front of the other, don’t remember, bay-baby to lock after, don’t wonder what he’d been thinking when he flamed that wood where…

‘Scuse me,’ he said, handing Perdita in her basket to Auric. Perdita, who had been peacefully sleeping, woke and began to cry.

‘What’s up?’ asked Auric. ‘Does she need feeding?’

Gardas sat down, took his pack off and lay down. ‘Watch me,’ he groaned. ‘Make sure I don’t fall off…’ It was too much effort to explain, ‘off the edge of the ridge and roll down the hill while having a seizure,’ but he hoped they could work that out. He lay, shielding his eyes from the sun with his big hands, counting slow, deep breaths.

‘Paul, you watch him,’ said Auric briskly. ‘I’ll check that Perdita’s all right.’

‘Won’t be – hungry,’ gasped Gardas. ‘Only – hour since – last feed.’

By the time that Auric had checked that Perdita wasn’t hungry, wet, or anything except startled at having been woken, Gardas had recovered enough to sit up and reassure her, and they set off again. Well before it grew dark, they descended to the plains and managed to find a camping place near a stream. Auric and Gardas fitted the tent-poles together and pulled the skins over them, and Paul found the bag of tent-pegs and handed them out without waiting to be asked, and then even went to search for firewood. Auric took out a packet of much the same mixture of oats, barley, dried peas and lentils that they had had for dinner yesterday, poured some of it into the cauldron (wearily agreeing with Paul that yes, it would be nice if they could roast a rabbit or some fish over the fire instead, but they hadn’t seen any rabbits or fish, so would Paul stop going _on_ about it?), and began to cook, while Gardas sat feeding Perdita. The stew was nearly ready when they realised they had company.

‘Good evening, kobold,’ said Auric.

‘Evening, humans and – other,’ replied the furry brown creature. It had a catlike head, but a fairly humanoid and tailless body, and paws which were almost hands but still bore wickedly sharp claws. Its green eyes gleamed in the twilight.

‘Want to share our supper? There’s plenty to go round,’ Auric offered.

‘Cooking! Beginning of the path to the Dark Side, that’s what it is!’ snorted the kobold. 

‘Well, if you don’t want any…’ Paul began.

‘Never said that, did I?’ retorted the kobold hastily. ‘Got a spare bowl?’

Auric found bowls for the four of them, and they introduced themselves. The kobold, whose name was Tallis, nodded approvingly when they explained that they were going to Cideria to find Beatrice. ‘She’s not bad, for a human,’ he said.

Auric dealt the stew into four bowls, and they ate hungrily. The kobold held out his bowl for a third helping, adding, ‘It’d be better with a bit more greenery in it – pity nettles won’t grow on blighted ground.’

‘I hate nettles,’ growled Paul.

‘Won’t like Cideria, will you?’ sniggered Tallis. ‘Lots of nettles they’ve got, over there.’

‘I always imagined it as a fruitful land – full of apple trees,’ said Auric.

‘Oh, it’s got those, too. Wild garlic, blackberries, apples, mangel-wurzels – but they all have their seasons. Always find nettles, can’t you? Nice and tangy when they’re raw, too.’

‘Do you prefer raw food?’ asked Auric.

‘Fire leads to cooking; cooking leads to sociability; sociability leads to tribalism; tribalism leads to scapegoating; scapegoating leads to fire. Start making campfires to cook your dinner on, and before you know where you are, you’re burning witches on them!’

‘So why’ve you had three helpings of our stew, if you don’t approve?’ asked Paul. ‘Are you just here to cause trouble, or what?’

‘You see? You’ve got your snug little campfire, I’m an outsider, so you start scapegoating me, when all I did was give you some advice.’

‘It doesn’t sound very good advice,’ objected Paul.

‘It wasn’t very good stew.’

Auric sighed. ‘Honoured Tallis, I apologise for my young companion. Can I have a word with you in private for a few minutes?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Tallis, and the two of them walked away until they disappeared into the twilight.

When they seemed to be out of earshot, Paul said, ‘And you think I complain a lot!’ at the same time that Gardas said, ‘And you think I’m nuts!’ They looked at each other, and laughed.

‘Scapegoating leads to sociability,’ said Paul.

They were silent for a few minutes, and then Paul said, ‘Look, I’m sorry about – not being a very nice person. I know I ought to be the sort of saintly, all-loving, all-forgiving hero who can go on loving you and believing that you’re a nice person deep down, but – you’ve done so much bad stuff, I can’t believe in you suddenly being nice, and I can’t start liking you all of a sudden.’

‘I’m sorry about taking your magic – and your arm,’ said Gardas.

‘You think that’s what I’m angry about?’ said Paul indignantly. ‘You think that’s the worst thing you’ve done? You killed my parents! Okay, they were my adoptive parents and they were commoners, but I loved them and they were the only parents I’ve ever known. You’ve killed lots of people, wizards and commoners, and now I’m supposed to believe you’ve turned into a good person just because you killed my father!’

That last was a surprise. ‘Did I?’ said Gardas. ‘You mean – Azalar was your father?’

‘Well, _duh!_ ’ said Paul. ‘Auric won’t tell me who my father was, but it was someone he used to love, who turned to the Dark Side. He can’t mean you, because he doesn’t think you were corrupted; you were just under a curse and didn’t know what you were doing. But Azalar would’ve been jealous because my mother never liked him as much as she liked Auric. But – I dunno, maybe she was cross with Auric about something and broke up with him and went out with Azalar just to get back at him, and she got pregnant, and she’d’ve been disgusted with herself because she didn’t even like Azalar, and disgusted with me, and that’s why she left me behind when she went back to Cideria. So she probably won’t want me back now, and Auric’s going to be stuck with looking after me because I’m his cousin, and I’m not sure he likes me, either.’

Gardas tried to think of something helpful to say. ‘I never knew my parents,’ he managed. ‘I grew up on a potions farm.’

‘A what?’

‘Where they keep children to turn them into potions ingredients,’ said Gardas. ‘You know, for the Dark Magic spells that call for “heretic Quintarian’s thumbs” and things. If I hadn’t refused to learn any religion, I’d have been butchered by the time I was twelve.’

‘Do those spells work?’ asked Paul.

Gardas shrugged. ‘Maybe. Dark wizards paid good money for Quintarian children, at any rate.’

‘But how do they know if they’re reading the spell right?’ Paul persisted. ‘I mean, how do they know if it means the thumbs of a devout Quintarian, who’d be a heretic from a Quadrene’s point of view, or the thumbs of someone who’s a heretic from Quintarianism, by maybe believing in six gods instead of five, or something?’

‘Maybe they tried both,’ said Gardas. ‘Once they took kids away, we never saw them again.’

‘But did they always kill them?’ Paul asked. ‘Are there a lot of these spells calling for just thumbs or lips or nose, rather than something you can’t live without, like your heart or lungs or stomach?’

‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ muttered Gardas.

‘Well,’ Paul said thoughtfully, ‘when I was little, there were quite a few people in our village who had missing bits. When I was really little, I thought it was because they came from faraway countries where everyone was born without a nose or without lips or whatever, but then I found out that they were people who’d been rescued after being hurt by bad people. There was a boy who joined our class at primary school when we were seven, and he’d just moved into the village to live with a foster-family, and his hands were all bandaged when he arrived, and when the bandages came off, he said he was praying to the Mother goddess for his thumbs to grow back, but the teacher told him he wouldn’t, and he cried and cried. I thought he was just crying about the obvious things his hands couldn’t do any more, but he was really religious, and what he was mostly upset about was that he couldn’t make the sacred sign to his gods. But then a few days later, he said his priest had told him that the gods care about what’s in your heart, not the shape of your hands, so he wasn’t going to be sad any more. I thought then that I’d probably prefer to be dead rather than live with an imperfect body, but – now I find I don’t. I’m glad you didn’t kill me.’

‘So am I,’ said Gardas.

‘And you’re damaged, too,’ added Paul, sounding suddenly concerned. ‘Oh gods – I’m sorry, I didn’t think – I haven’t been making you remember, have I? Talking about my parents and stuff?’

‘I’m all right. I don’t remember any of it.’ Perhaps he had learnt the trick of not-remembering at last. He tried to think of some way to show that he trusted Paul, and settled on, ‘Want to hold Perdita?’

‘Yeah, uh – if that’s all right.’

‘Safe enough, if you stay sitting.’ Gardas lifted his daughter into Paul’s lap, whispering to her in Dragonese to be good. Perdita chortled, and blew bubbles at Paul, who let out a terrified scream.

‘You all right?’ Gardas asked.

‘Her breath – it’s hot – she’s a dragon!’

‘You didn’t know?’ Gardas asked. But then, Paul had tended to keep his distance from the baby. ‘Why’d you think she calmed down, every time I talked Dragonese to her?’

‘I thought that was just you being weird!’

By now, Auric had come running back. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

‘The baby,’ gasped Paul again. ‘It’s a dragon!’

‘Part dragon,’ said Auric. ‘Part Grey dragon, to be precise. That’s what Tallis and I were talking about, though I didn’t understand all of what he told me. I suppose it was because Gardas was a dragon when she was conceived.’

‘Can’t you stop her being one? Take her magic away, so she can’t burn us?’

‘Actually, I think we’d probably better wait until a proper hex therapist has had a chance to see Gardas – and at you. Taking someone’s magic away, if it isn’t done by a qualified specialist – well, I did what the court ordered me to, but I’m not trained, and neither was Gardas when he took yours. But anyway, I don’t think we’ve got anything to fear from a silver dragon. Tallis was telling me about them. He says you don’t see many of them in temperate zones like this, because they’ve mainly fled to faraway mountains, but apparently their breath heals instead of burning and killing – unless they’ve suffered some kind of spell that distorts their magic, or a bad experience that distorts their character. They’re the most intelligent species of dragon, and don’t normally need riders to control and direct them – though they’re happy to let kobolds ride on them, just for company, and there are even stories of a few that have developed a special friendship with a human. But it’s always on the basis of friendship between equals, not like a human owning and training a Gules dragon. And Tallis didn’t know much about humans who are part-dragon, or turn into dragons, but he said one of Beatrice’s friends called Xanthus might know more.’

‘Can part-dragons heal people?’ asked Gardas.

‘I don’t know. Paul, do you want to try it?’


	7. Chapter 7

By the time the travellers arrived in Cideria two months later, the harvest season was nearly over. Children were back in school, their work in the fields complete for the summer, and the barns were full of hay. The raspberries were finished, but the brambles (which were at least as numerous as nettles) were covered in blackberries. The least damaged apples were stacked in boxes, to make snacks or pies until spring, and most of the rest were being pressed for juice or cider, but there were boxes of windfalls standing outside garden gates for passers-by to help themselves. Paul had viewed the worm-holed apples hungrily but warily at first, in spite of Gardas’s pointing out that a hole meant the maggot had now left, so what did he have to worry about? Auric took pity on the boy, using his wand to conjure away worm-eaten or bruised parts. He refused to peel and core the fruit as well, pointing out that the skin was perfectly edible, and that Paul had been happy enough to eat apples as they were, before he had discovered that he was a wizard and could peel them by magic.

Gardas munched apples, cores and worm-passages indiscriminately, glad that he had had time to fashion a sling to hold Perdita against his body so that he had his hands free. It would have been risky to use the sling if he had still been prone to seizures, but he wasn’t getting them so often now, at least during the daytime. It was easy enough not to remember the past, when there was so much in the newness of Cideria to wonder about. Their journey was never the same for the whole of a day. They climbed over limestone hills and descended into flat, fragrant meadows scored by drainage ditches, passed through deep valleys full of strange ferns, mosses, and tall beech-trees stretching towards the distant sun, and emerged onto marshy rough pasture that squelched underfoot. Much of the time, the public path, honoured by centuries of tradition, took them across farms; they had no scruples about trekking across the middle of a field if it had obviously just been harvested, but walked carefully around the edges, against the hedgerow, if it was being sown for a winter crop. 

Remembering the story of the man who had been killed by a boar while protecting a baby princess, Gardas felt more wary of walking through fields of animals. Sheep mostly got out of their way, but he had wanted to look for a different path the first time they had to walk through a field of cattle. Paul, as a country boy, had thought this was hilarious.

‘Cows kill more people than wolves do, you know that?’ muttered Gardas.

‘Oh, that’s just a load of bullocks,’ said Paul cheerfully. ‘I’ll go last, and keep them off us – you’ll see.’ The bullocks had closed in and surrounded them, herding them to the stile on the far side of the field, but whenever the beasts came too close, Paul had turned and looked at them, even patted one on the nose, and the animals had backed away at once. The travellers had crossed the field with no worse fate than getting their boots encrusted with slurry, and Gardas had felt ashamed of his cowardice, knowing that once he could have... he had fought down the memory at once, but that night he thought he must have dreamed of being a dragon, roasting cows with a single blast and devouring them. The next morning he had woken feeling thick-headed, his tongue and the inside of his cheeks bitten and bloody after another seizure in the night. There seemed to be no way to keep memories off when he dreamed, and his cheeks were ridged with scars from the ensuing seizures.

Drakespring, Cideria’s capital city, was really just a market town which happened to hold a king’s castle, council offices, a Temple of All Gods, and a house for the many priests who officiated there.

‘Aren’t some of them _priestesses?_ ’ Paul corrected, watching the robed men and women walking to services.

‘I think it depends what sort of god they serve,’ said Auric. ‘As far as I can remember from what Beatrice said, if they serve a goddess who is specifically female, and whose worshippers are all female, they’re priestesses. But if they follow a religion that teaches that God has no sex, or has aspects of both sexes, so that male and female ministers can equally represent God to the people and the people to God, then they’re just priests. Or some of them believe that every worshipper is a priest, whatever job he or she does, and that full-time service just means their job is to take care of the poor and preach sermons, and to feed the Temple dragons.’

Indeed there were a lot of small red dragons around the Temple – Gules, the colour was called in dragons, Auric explained, and all Gules dragons were females – ranging from the size of a cat to that of a large dog. Some lay sunning themselves on graves in the Temple gardens, or even on tombs inside the Temple itself – apparently, in many Ciderian religions it was the custom for the dead to be buried in or near a temple, planting flowers or shrubs on the graves of those buried outside, though others preferred to scatter the ashes of the dead in sacred forests. Ciderians evidently did not fear ghosts, or feel that the gods objected to the proximity of rotting bodies. 

More dragons lay stretched out on window-ledges, hung upside down from the rafters like giant bats, perched on the rooftops to spy for pigeons, or lay curled up on the pews like scaly red cushions. In one corner of the temple, a group of men and women stood and watched as a priest held out a baby, naked apart from a nappy, to one of the largest dragons, the size of a big hunting-dog. Many of the people had other children with them, who were either standing at the front or held up by relatives to get a good view. Was this a sacrifice being carried out? Should they rescue the baby now? Paul gulped and Gardas shuddered – had _he_ eaten children like that baby? – but the gules dragon only flicked out a long tongue, licking the baby on its face, its back, the palms of its hands and the soles of its feet, and finally on its chest. The baby, rather older than Perdita – perhaps a year old – laughed and reached out a chubby hand to pat the dragon on the snout. Perdita (the sling holding her face outward so that she could see what was going on) laughed too. [The priest and all the group sang](https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=God+Will+Delight+May+the+Road+Rise+to+Meet+You&docid=608034014501014005&mid=51EB0078DC0E9916485D51EB0078DC0E9916485D&view=detail&FORM=VRAASM&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3DMay%2Bthe%2BRoad%2BRise%2Bto%2BMeet%2BYou%26FORM%3DVDMHRS): 

Be your head filled with wisdom;

May your back be strong enough to work;

May your hands be kind enough to bless;

May your feet go gladly on their way;

And as long as you shall live,

May your heart be open to the love of God.

‘Maybe we could bring Perdita to be blessed,’ suggested Auric.

‘I’d rather find out what happens to those kids when they’re older,’ said Gardas, folding his hands around his daughter. ‘I won’t let her come to any harm.’ Even if the baby they had just seen being licked wasn’t being eaten right now, it didn’t mean it wasn’t being conditioned to accept being sacrificed later on.

‘Well, we can’t hang around,’ said Auric. ‘We’d better report that we’re here and ask permission to settle in Cideria. Does that mean reporting to the council offices or to the King, I wonder?’

‘Or you could start by talking to an old friend,’ said a voice behind them.

They spun round to see Beatrice, clad in the shabby, blackish-grey robe of a witch who hasn’t got time to keep dyeing her robes deepest black, with a similarly scuffed pointy hat sitting on top of her curly brown hair. Her face was sadder than Gardas remembered, but her eyes were still kind.

‘Wizard Auric, you are – probably – welcome to Cideria,’ she said, bowing while holding her hat in place with her left hand. ‘You too, brave Gardas. Paul, it’s good to meet you at last. And you must be Perdita?’ She held out a finger, which Perdita happily grasped. ‘The King asked Granny Flint and me to take care of your group, because he couldn’t make up his mind what to do about you,’ she said.

‘Really?’ said Auric. ‘I wouldn’t have thought – I mean, he knows you’ve got a personal interest in all of us, doesn’t he?’

‘That’s why he asked me to decide,’ said Beatrice. ‘He says after my experiences, I’m the only one here with the right to judge, and Granny Flint can supply the impersonal side.’

‘When did you know we were coming?’ asked Auric.

‘Oh, weeks ago,’ said Beatrice. ‘First from traders on brooms, but then Tallis came on a dragon and told me a bit more. If we fly over to Granny Flint’s, we can have the trial this afternoon – I’ve brought a spare broom, and they’re each easily big enough to take a passenger – but would you like some lunch first?’

‘That would be – very kind of you, but – you know, fraternising…’ said Auric nervously.

‘Well, since I’m already fraternising with you, I might as well do the job properly. There’s a stall in the market that sells good pasties, and we can come back here and eat them in the Temple gardens.’

The pasties were the most delicious thing Gardas had tasted in at least sixteen years. But, as they sat and ate among the daisy-covered graves, he wondered whether he was eating his last meal.


	8. Chapter 8

After lunch, Beatrice handed a spare broom to Auric, who climbed on, with Gardas behind him. Beatrice straddled her – not a broom at all, Gardas realised, but a mop – with Paul behind her, clinging grimly to the stick with his one usable hand.

‘You’re welcome to sit in front, if you’d rather,’ said Beatrice. ‘The mop’s fairly docile, and there’s no reason I can’t hold onto you with my hands and steer with my knees.’

‘No thanks,’ muttered Paul. ‘I’m all right.’

Granny Flint’s home turned out to be not a cottage, but a cave in the side of one of the steep gorges. She didn’t seem to be in when they arrived, though Beatrice, who had lived with her mentor in the cave throughout her apprenticeship, walked in cheerfully with her guests. The cave was austere even by the standards of what Gardas had heard of witches – no beds or armchairs, not even any sign of food. Back in the market, when the pie-seller had given Beatrice ( _given_ , not sold, Gardas noticed) four pasties, his neighbour on the cake-stall had offered them dessert, and Beatrice had accepted an apple pie for the four of them to share between them – but not a second pie or some scones to take back to her old teacher. Surely older witches liked sweet things, or why were there all those stories about gingerbread houses and gingerbread children?

Or was Beatrice’s mentor a different kind of witch – perhaps not even human? There was a rock that seemed to serve as a work-bench, covered with various medicinal or magical herbs, but no fireplace or cauldron – so did their host have no need of heating or cooked food? The inhabitants of caves like these were more likely to be big, bear-like creatures, furry enough not to mind the cold, and they might prefer raw meat to sweet pastries. But there was no sign even of well-gnawed bones – nothing but rocks. A horn drinking-vessel lay on a ledge of rock, and water dripped along one side of the cave, trickled into a pool, and ran into some underground stream, but otherwise there was nothing.

‘She might be in a trance, or having a rest,’ said Beatrice. ‘Even in the cool of the cave, summer’s tiring for her.’

‘I was just collecting my thoughts, if you don’t mind!’ snapped a sharp voice – a trollish voice, Gardas realised, but nothing like the thick, slow speech of the Downsland trolls, or the rough voices of the troll guards who had come down to watch him until his trial. (His _first_ trial, he corrected himself.) The troll woman who stood up now to face them was small by troll standards – which was to say, she was only slightly taller than Gardas, considerably taller than Auric, and loomed over Beatrice and Paul. Her skin was greyish-white as the crust on a cheese, which made her look similar to the Downsland trolls, but her teeth and fingernails were golden-brown spikes, and her dark grey eyes were clear and piercing.

‘Sorry, Granny,’ said Beatrice. ‘Would you like a cup of lime cordial?’

‘If I wanted one, I could fetch it myself, young lady!’

‘Yes, but I’m nearer the spring.’

‘Oh, very well then. If it makes you feel better,’ grumbled the old troll. Beatrice filled the horn with mineral-rich water from the pool, and handed it to the troll, who drank appreciatively. ‘Well,’ she said when she’d finished, ‘you’d better state your case. You first,’ she added, pointing a claw at Auric.

‘Ah. Yes, well, I, Wizard Auric of the Downsland, cousin of the late Dark Lord, Wizard Azalar, come to seek sanctuary for myself and my companion Gardas, former slave of Wizard Azalar, and for Gardas’s infant daughter Perdita, on the grounds that our connection with Azalar makes it politically unsafe for us to live any longer in our home country, and that Perdita would also face persecution for having been born part-dragon. I come also to bring my ward Paul to the custody of his mother, Witch Beatrice Spinner.’

Granny Flint turned to Gardas. ‘Do you have anything to add?’

‘Not much. I can’t remember what happened. I was under a compulsion spell. I was on trial back in the Downs, but I started having fits when I tried to remember. Uh – could someone hold Perdita? I don’t want to fall down when she’s tied to me.’

Beatrice took Perdita, who cried at being separated from her father, but calmed when Gardas murmured to her, ‘ _Stop battling, bratling._ ’ Granny Flint allowed Gardas – though not Auric or Paul – to take off his pack and sit down on the cave floor, in case of accidents. The floor was damp and so cold that it chilled his bones (pity he wasn’t still a dra- _STOP IT!_ ), and there were plenty of hard things he could hit himself on, but at least it was safer than standing.

‘What about you, pebble? Did you see what happened?’

‘I’m not a pebble – I’m thirteen!’ objected Paul.

Granny Flint laughed. ‘Sorry, young stalagmite. But were you at Gardas’s trial?’

‘Yes. Auric proved that Gardas was innocent, because all the things he did weren’t really his fault because he was under a compulsion spell. So the inquisitor decided to just take away his magic and exile him, instead of putting him to death.’

Granny Flint turned back to Auric. ‘Casting compulsion spells is against the law, in Cideria. Is it illegal where you come from?’

‘Yes, of course. It carries the death penalty, unless there are serious mitigating circumstances.’

‘Oh? Why’s it so severe?’

‘Because people under the spell can’t control what they’re doing. Sometimes they don’t even know what they’re doing, and can’t remember it afterwards, the way Gardas can’t. They just become another pair of hands for the person controlling them.’

‘So why punish him at all, if he was under a compulsion spell?’

‘Well – I suppose people thought, anyone who’d been under a compulsion for fourteen years before starting to fight it must be at least a bit guilty, and they don’t realise that someone weak-minded – well, weak-willed…’ (Beatrice snorted incredulously at the suggestion that Gardas was either) ‘well, someone who’d had the sort of life Gardas had had, who was used to being a slave, might not be able to resist a powerful wizard’s spell. But I hoped that people here might be able to understand better, and cure him of some of the damage that was done.’

‘I hope we can heal some of it, too,’ said Granny Flint bitterly. ‘But I don’t know of a hex therapist in the world who can give an ex-wizard back his lost magic. Whose idea was that?’

‘The inquisitor’s.’

‘And was that part of his punishment for being a helpless slave, too?’

‘No, it was – just a precaution.’

‘Oh? It didn’t occur to someone to put a restraining collar on him, until he was free of this “compulsion spell?”’ Granny Flint’s voice was becoming more sarcastic with every sentence.

‘He was already wearing one, but – he might have tricked someone into taking it off him, or something.’

‘This seems a very strange case,’ said the troll. ‘I’ve never heard of a compulsion spell that went on working after the caster was dead, for one thing. Or is Azalar still alive, somewhere?’

‘No. He’s dead. Very dead. Uh…’ Auric floundered.

‘Beatrice, will you give him a truth potion?’ said Granny Flint. ‘Just as a “precaution”, you understand,’ she added to Auric.

‘What if I say something that triggers Gardas’s memories?’ said Auric. ‘He stops breathing when he has a seizure, and then afterwards he staggers up and he’s so confused that he could trip and hurt himself, before we can get him to lie down and sleep…’

‘You should have thought of that earlier. Beatrice, the potion.’

Beatrice, who by now looked as if she was going to be sick, fetched a vial of potion and held it to Auric’s lips. He swallowed, miserably but obediently.

‘Auric, did you cast a compulsion spell on Gardas?’ Granny Flint asked.

‘Yes.’

‘What does it compel him to do?’

‘To have seizures whenever he thinks about what happened when he was Azalar’s dragon.’

‘Why did you do it?’

‘Well, he was going to be questioned, and it was obvious they were going to have truth-potions or mind-readers or something like that, so I had to make him forget it, so that the court wouldn’t be able to find any guilt in his memory, and it would look as if he’d just been under a compulsion the whole time.’

‘So he hadn’t been under a compulsion spell from Azalar, before?’

‘No – I mean, Azalar was using something to control him, but not that – or I don’t think it was that, anyway, it was more generally Azalar messing around with his mind. I mean, he’s not stupid, but he doesn’t know how to act human, and Azalar made him worse.’

‘So you thought you’d better commit a capital crime, in order to make people think someone else had committed a crime, in order to stop Gardas being convicted of a crime?’

‘Yes, that’s right. I mean, I thought it was the nearest thing to the truth that the jury and the inquisitor would understand, without knowing Gardas and understanding the way he thinks – or doesn’t think – just the way he reacts, really. And – I thought it might help Gardas, I mean psychologically, not legally, if he could just put it all behind him and not have to live with the memory and the guilt of what he’d done. He hasn’t had a chance at a decent life before, and he certainly wouldn’t now, if everyone knew he was a criminal and _he_ knew he was a criminal, and I just wanted him to be able to start fresh and new, and be like a child again.’

‘By giving him seizures that make him stop breathing?’ burst in Beatrice furiously.

‘It had to be sharp enough to teach him not to remember! I mean, he’s been not human for most of the time for the past fourteen years, and cringing to Azalar when he was human, he’s so messed up by now that pain is the only thing he understands – or it was when I cast the spell, anyway.’

‘And taking away his magic? Are you even qualified to perform that spell?’ Beatrice added.

‘Well, nobody else in the court was, either! And neither was Gardas, and he took Paul’s, so it serves him right! Are you so hung up on Gardas that you don’t even care what he did to your own son? Why are you picking on me? Don’t you remember what he did to you? Or were you lying about that? Did you prefer Gardas to me all along?’ Auric was furious now, but sobbing at the same time. Beatrice looked furious and horrified. Paul just looked horrified. Perdita was shrieking at all the unexpected noise. Gardas was lying on his back by now, concentrating on his breathing, trying to blank everything out.

‘That’s enough,’ said Granny Flint. ‘You’d better give him the antidote.’

Auric struggled harder against being given the antidote than he had against the original truth potion, but Granny Flint restrained him while Beatrice tipped it down his throat. He calmed down, and stood, pale-faced, realising what he had just told everyone. And he couldn’t say, ‘I didn’t mean it,’ because everyone knew that he did.

‘Well, Gardas?’ said the troll. ‘Do you want this wizard to take his compulsion off you now, so that you can think about the past without falling down? Or would you rather wait, and let a hex therapist do it?’

‘Can you take it off?’ Gardas asked. He felt too tired and bewildered to take in everything he’d heard, and while he felt very much like incinerating Auric, he was also desperate to be free of his seizures. Anything, surely, would be better than that. And even if he suspected that he didn’t really want to know what he’d been doing in the past fourteen years, especially whatever it was that he had done to Beatrice – why would he have harmed _her?_ – he needed to know.

‘Of course.’ Auric took out his wand and touched it to Gardas’s forehead. Gardas waited to see if a rush of understanding came flooding back. Instead, there was just – confusion. Guilt. Memories of being the dragon – presumably it had been Azalar turning him into a dragon, but he couldn’t remember clearly – and how good it had felt to swoop over the Downs and rain fire on targets, but not _why_ he had thought it was a good idea. Nothing about Perdita’s conception. Women featured in his memory only as dinner. Had he really fathered a child, not only without love, without giving any pleasure to her mother, without the woman’s consent, but without even feeling lust himself? Or had he somehow impregnated a woman without having touched her? Almost everything that came from a dragon had magical properties – even silver dragons, in contrast to their healing fire, had scorching tears (though fortunately Perdita didn’t seem to have that power yet). Granny Flint held out her hand for Auric’s wand, which he meekly handed over.

‘Well? How do you feel?’ asked Beatrice.

‘Jumbled,’ said Gardas. ‘I still can’t remember it all, and I can’t understand the bits I do remember.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Granny Flint. ‘Well, Gardas, you’ve probably committed crimes, but you’re nowhere near fit to stand trial yet. Auric, you’ve definitely committed a crime, but you seem to have thought you were doing it for the right reason, and I’m not sure I’d call you entirely sane, either. So I’ll give you both a year’s probation, while I decide what to do next. You’ll each live under supervision, and work for the public good, and you’ll have sessions with a mind-healer. Beatrice, any ideas?’

‘I think Xanthus, if he can spare the time,’ said Beatrice. ‘He helped me a lot, and he’s a hex therapist as well as a general mind-healer, so he’d know more about helping Gardas deal with the after-effects of these spells. And if anyone can understand how it feels, being part human and part not, Xanthus can.’

‘Do we need to go to prison?’ Gardas asked. ‘Or a lunatic asylum?’

‘Probably not prison, until we can work out what you’re guilty of,’ said Granny Flint. ‘Hospital – well, it depends on what Xanthus thinks. But I think you’d be better off living with a witch who can keep an eye on you. I’ll take Auric, but it’s probably best not having the two of you together, at the moment.’

‘I’ve got room in my cottage for Gardas,’ offered Beatrice. 

‘Are you sure you want him there?’ asked Granny Flint.

‘After what he did before?’ added Auric.

‘I can look after myself. I’m a qualified witch, now. Besides, I could use some help, and I don’t have an apprentice at the moment.’

‘I can’t do magic now,’ Gardas reminded her.

‘That’s not a problem,’ Beatrice said cheerfully. ‘And I’ve got three bedrooms, so there’s plenty of room for the two of us and Paul, and…’

‘I’m not coming to live with you if he’s going to be there!’ said Paul. ‘You’re – I was starting to trust you!’ he added to Gardas. ‘I thought maybe Auric was right and the stuff you did wasn’t really your fault, and you were just a tool for Azalar, like his wand. But you did it because you liked flaming people and eating them, didn’t you? You just went along with what Azalar wanted because you’re as evil as he was, and he gave you the excuse to do all the stuff you couldn’t get away with otherwise! And Auric lied to me!’

‘Well, who do you want to live with, young stalagmite?’ asked Granny Flint. ‘You can stay with Auric and me for now, or with your – your mother and Gardas, or I could find a foster family for you.’

‘With Auric,’ said Paul. ‘He’s been looking after me since my parents – my adoptive parents who wanted me when Beatrice didn’t – got killed by him’ (he glared at Gardas), ‘so even if Auric did lie because he was trying to protect Gardas, he’s the only person since my parents died who’s cared about me even a little. Can he adopt me?’

‘Not just yet,’ said Granny Flint. ‘He’s on probation, and he doesn’t have a parenting licence. But I have, and so does Beatrice – it’s a standard part of witch-training. So if you stay with me, I can be your foster-parent and Auric can look after you under my supervision. I think the smaller pebble had better stay with Gardas,’ she added, casting a glance at Perdita who was now sitting on Gardas’s lap, ‘so, Beatrice, are you willing to look after both of them for now?’

‘Of course,’ said Beatrice. ‘And, Paul – I’m not surprised you’re angry with me at the moment, but do you think you’d be willing to meet with me to talk, sometime? Maybe when Gardas is with Xanthus?’

Paul said nothing.

‘Am I allowed to study for a parenting licence?’ asked Gardas. ‘After all I’ve done?’

‘Of course,’ said Granny Flint. ‘How else can we make sure you know not to do it again? It won’t just be Beatrice keeping an eye on you – I’ll send a parenting instructor round shortly. But it’s not as though I can rustle up foster-dragons for Perdita. She’s going to need you.’


	9. Chapter 9

Mountain trolls are too heavy to be comfortable on brooms, so Granny Flint simply told Auric to go with Beatrice to meet Xanthus, and bring himself and Paul back by sunset. Beatrice handed Auric the mop (‘You might as well keep it – the cave can get pretty damp,’), and Paul, who was pointedly avoiding both Gardas and Beatrice, climbed on behind Auric.

‘Is it – all right if – if I ride with you?’ Gardas asked Beatrice. With his memory restored, he could think of plenty of reasons why she might not want him close to her. At any rate, she probably shouldn’t, if she were sensible.

‘Yes, of course you can. If I’m going to be sharing my house with you, I’m hardly going to object to this, am I? Now, are you sure you’ve got Perdita secure? And do you need anything from your pack? If we take anything you need, we can leave the rest of the pack here at the cave, and go straight home afterwards.’

‘Just some spare socks, and Perdita’s bottle and spare nappies. The rest is mostly the tent, and – oh. We’ve been, well, Auric’s been turning the cauldron into a baby-bath.’

‘I’m sure I can find something to wash a baby in,’ said Beatrice. Everything else that Gardas and Perdita between them owned fitted into Perdita’s basket, which Beatrice hung over the front end of her broom, and they were off.

Xanthus’s home appeared to be on the edge of a loose cluster of farmhouses surrounded by pastures. There were a few fields of sheep, a few where donkeys or carthorses grazed, and one field laid out with some kind of obstacle course: a track strewn with various objects for a horse to jump over. At its edge stood a large stable. 

Beatrice knocked on the door. ‘Xanthus?’ she said. ‘We’ve got some newcomers to the kingdom. Granny Flint thinks at least two of them need an assessment from you.’

The top half of the stable door swung open, to reveal a chestnut centaur, ten feet tall, with a ruddy complexion on his upper body, golden hair and beard, and a golden tail. ‘Ah. You must be Gardas,’ he said. ‘I’m Xanthus – pleased to meet you. That’s a beautiful hatchling you’ve got there.’

‘My daughter Perdita,’ said Gardas. Xanthus shook hands with him, and then stroked a finger over Perdita’s head, outlining the sides of her crest of silver hair – which now resembled a horse’s mane growing along the centre of her head. He looked closely at her golden eyes with their odd pupils – not round like a human’s, or vertical almond-shapes like a cat’s, but horizontal rectangular slots.

‘Are you Wizard Auric?’ Xanthus shook hands with the wizard, too. ‘And – I’m not sure of your name, young foal?’ He reached down to shake hands with Paul.

‘Paul,’ said the boy, who seemed less offended by this than ‘pebble’.

‘My son Paul is here for the first time, now that the Downs are out of quarantine,’ explained Beatrice.

‘But I don’t live with Beatrice,’ added Paul. ‘I’m going to be living with Auric and a troll, because she’ – he looked reproachfully at Beatrice – ‘wants him to live with her.’

‘Gardas and Auric are both here on probation, on condition that a witch supervises them, and considering that Auric had used some rather illegal magic on Gardas, which Gardas has only just found out about, it doesn’t seem a good idea to have them living together,’ Beatrice explained. ‘Granny Flint’s got a place for Auric, so I offered to take Gardas.’

‘Not the other way round? Interesting,’ said Xanthus. ‘So, which of you are my patients?’

‘Granny Flint thinks you need to check whether Gardas was mad to do all the things he did, or whether Auric was mad to try and trick people into thinking it wasn’t Gardas’s fault,’ said Paul. ‘Are you going to check whether Beatrice is mad to let Gardas come and stay with her?’

‘I don’t think she is, but I expect I’ll want her to come up sometimes to talk to me about how things are going,’ said Xanthus. ‘And it might be a good idea if you did, too.’

‘I’m not mad!’ said Paul indignantly.

‘No, I don’t think you are. It’s not a requirement,’ said Xanthus.

‘I spent quite a lot of time visiting Xanthus, when I came back here after my year in the Downsland,’ said Beatrice. ‘Sometimes, when you’ve had some bad things happen to you, it can be helpful to have someone to talk to who isn’t a parent or teacher, and won’t tell you off for being rude.’

‘You mean bad things like having me? And then leaving me behind to grow up in a country where your evil Dark wizard ex-boyfriend and his mad evil dragon were destroying everything?’ snapped Paul.

Beatrice blinked. ‘It wasn’t – you thought Azalar was your father? Who told you that?’

‘No-one. I just worked it out. You may not have been counting the years, Mother, but I am thirteen, and I do know babies don’t come from under gooseberry bushes.’

‘No, but – look, I can give you my word of honour that Azalar wasn’t your father. Does that help?’ said Beatrice wearily.

‘Would it help if everyone came in and sat down?’ offered Xanthus. Nobody objected, so he opened the lower half of his door, and invited them in. There were two comfortable armchairs (Auric gestured to Beatrice to take one, and Paul the other), two large, cushion-like beanbags on which Auric and Gardas sat, and a thick layer of straw, on which Xanthus lay, looking as if he would have been more comfortable standing but was trying not to tower above his guests more than he could help. Perdita sat propped against the edge of Gardas’s beanbag, playing with bits of straw.

‘I think I’m going to need each of you to come and visit – sometimes each of you on your own, and sometimes everyone together – to discuss how you Downslanders are coping with Cideria, and how Beatrice feels about having you around,’ said Xanthus. ‘But if Gardas and Auric are the ones Granny Flint is worried about, maybe I’d better start with you two. Gardas, can you tell me a bit about yourself?’

Gardas felt as though his tongue and mouth had solidified into a block of stone. What did Xanthus want to know?

‘What sort of person are you?’ Xanthus prompted.

Gardas tried to think of anything to say. ‘Tall. Azalar’s slave – I mean, ex-slave. An ex-dragon. And ex-wizard. And Perdita’s father.’

‘Can you tell me a bit more about your personality? For example, would you say you get angry easily?’

‘I get angry easily,’ repeated Gardas obediently.

‘No, I mean, is it true that you get angry easily, or not?’

Gardas didn’t answer. He got angry sometimes, but what was ‘easily’? Did he get angry more often than most people? On the journey over the last couple of months, he hadn’t raged and sulked as much as Paul had, but then, Paul had a lot to be angry about. And Gardas certainly didn’t know anyone else whose anger was so bad that it made them turn into a dragon – well, except Perdita, and she hadn’t _turned into_ a dragon, she just _was_ part-dragon, which must be because of something Gardas had done.

‘Do you care what other people think of you, or not?’

‘Sometimes.’ Gardas had always known that most people just thought he was weird – a big stupid oaf, or a big crazy monster – and that it was no use trying to change their minds. He’d had friends at the potions farm until he was nine, but after that, he’d just been the house bully, more hated and feared than Lankin himself, and he couldn’t explain why he did what he did, but he’d known that he was evil and shouldn’t expect to have friends. But then, when he was eleven, Azalar’s parents had bought him, so then pleasing Azalar had mattered, because he belonged to Azalar, and so serving Azalar was his reason for being alive, and he’d wanted to please Gardas and Beatrice because he liked them, and as for Paul – well, he was trying to be nice to Paul, but expecting Paul to like him after what he’d done was too much to hope for.

‘Do you feel guilty if you hurt people?’

‘Sometimes.’ Which people? When? He’d felt guilty about hurting the other children in the potions farm, but he knew that something much worse would happen if he didn’t, but after a while he’d started to enjoy it, which proved he was just as evil as Lankin said. It was no wonder Azalar had turned him into a dragon – or his anger had turned him into one and Azalar had made use of it, or whatever it was. And as a dragon, he’d definitely enjoyed burning people, and hadn’t felt guilty at all, which was why being a dragon was so much easier than being human. But now he was human again, and he couldn’t look at Paul’s withered arm without his stomach clenching. And he must have hurt Beatrice, too, and Perdita’s mother, and he felt guilty about that, even though he hadn’t really understood at the time that he was doing anything bad to Beatrice, and he didn’t remember Perdita’s mother at all, which made him feel even more guilty. On the other hand, he didn’t feel at all guilty about killing Azalar, and, as he was Azalar’s slave, he probably should.

‘Do you enjoy taking risks?’

‘Sometimes.’ At least, when he was a boy he had, clambering about on the steep slopes to scour the sacred carvings, when Azalar had thought it looked insanely dangerous. Walking through Cideria lately, he had looked up at the trees and rocks and longed to climb them – but he couldn’t, not now that he had a baby who needed him. He mustn’t risk Perdita’s father’s life.

‘Do you feel that people don’t respect you?’

‘No, they don’t.’ Why would anyone respect _him?_ ‘Well – Beatrice does, I think. I don’t know why.’ And he had thought Auric did, until today.

‘Do you do whatever it takes to get what you want?’

‘I don’t know.’ He wasn’t sure what he did want, anyway, except for one thing. ‘I want to be a good dad to Perdita. I’ll do anything for that.’

‘Are you good at stealing things?’

‘Yes.’ Back in the potions farm, he had been the champion at raiding the larder, and later on, he had been able to fetch Azalar anything he wanted in the way of restricted books or potions ingredients. He had felt sick, the first time Azalar had wanted him to get human body parts that had probably come from the children he’d grown up with – but he had reminded himself that he already knew he was evil, and so nothing he did could make him any worse.

‘Do you ever feel lonely?’

‘Yes.’ Nearly always – but then, monsters didn’t have friends.

‘Do you want to be rich and powerful?’

‘No!’ Why would he want that? What could he do with it?

‘Are you a convincing liar?’

‘Ye…’ Gardas suddenly burst out laughing, a manic, bitter laugh. ‘If I say yes, you won’t know whether I’m telling the truth, will you? And if I say no, you won’t know whether I’m lying!’

Xanthus laughed, too, and reached down to clap Gardas affectionately on the shoulder. ‘Well done! That is an excellent point! So – what do you think I could do?’

‘You could give me a truth potion,’ said Gardas. ‘It won’t make me have seizures any more, now Auric’s taken the compulsion off me. And – it’s easier to talk, when I’ve had some. And you’d know whether to believe me.’

‘That – could be worth trying,’ said Xanthus. ‘I don’t have any here at the moment, but maybe Beatrice could brew some and bring it along next time you come to visit. Now, Auric, is it true that you’ve misled people about Gardas in the past? And was it true that you used a compulsion spell on Gardas himself, to make him have seizures if anyone tried to question him?’

‘Only because he was trying to protect Gardas!’ interrupted Paul. ‘Because he actually wants to help the vicious beast!’

‘Yes, I did both of those; and I’m sorry; and yes, I did mean to help,’ whispered Auric, his head hanging down.

‘Hmm. Well, if you want to help him now – or to help yourself – I’m going to need to ask you to tell me the truth,’ said Xanthus. ‘We don’t have any truth potion now, but will you promise to do that?’

‘I promise,’ said Auric wretchedly.

‘Good. Now, how long have you known Gardas?’

‘Since he was eleven. My aunt and uncle bought him so that he could attend school for seven years, while also acting as a servant to my cousin Azalar, and then continue to serve Azalar for another seven years to pay for his schooling.’

‘And what was Gardas like, as a boy?’

‘Quiet. He seemed to want to please Azalar, and be terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing.’

‘Did he make any lasting friendships at school? Or was he the sort of person who’s always starting new friendships with people, then falling out with them?’

‘Well, neither, really. He was painfully shy, and there weren’t many people he could talk to at all. He got on with his schoolwork, and did chores for Azalar. In the holidays, he hung around with Azalar and me, and either joined in with what we were doing, or just watched.’

‘So he wasn’t the sort of person who needed to be the centre of attention? Not very egocentric?’

‘Gardas? He’s the humblest person I’ve ever met. You wouldn’t think someone that tall and – unusual-looking could fade into the background, but he generally managed it.’

‘Did he get into trouble much, do you know?’

‘Quite often,’ Auric admitted. ‘Sometimes I think it was when Azalar put him up to some prank or other, though he never admitted it, but other times, he just lost his temper for no obvious reason, and hit someone or set fire to something. I suppose all that time having to grovel to Azalar, and having no friends of his own, was bound to push him over the edge sometimes. He improved a lot when Beatrice came as an exchange student in Gardas’s fifth year, and made friends with him and started encouraging him to find hobbies he might enjoy, like the duelling club. I think that was the first time I stopped being a selfish adolescent brat and started trying to give Gardas some encouragement myself, and I realised he was a much more talented wizard than I’d imagined. I just wish I’d had the sense to do that four years earlier – it might have given him the confidence to stand up to Azalar.’

‘Thank you – that’s very helpful,’ said Xanthus. ‘And what about you, Paul? You’ve known Gardas far more recently, but what do you think of him?’

‘He’s a monster!’ said Paul. ‘He killed my parents – my adoptive parents, the ones who wanted me and looked after me – and lots of other people, and if there hadn’t been a quarantine around the Downs, he’d’ve been killing people and setting fire to all the woods round here, too! He destroyed the Walled City of Wizards! And he took away my magic and burned my arm, and the only reason he didn’t kill me was maybe because my mum was nice to him when he was a kid or something, not because he could see that killing anyone is wrong!’

‘And what about since then?’ asked Xanthus. ‘Have you travelled from the Downsland with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what’s he like as a person?’

‘Creepy!’ said Paul. ‘His voice doesn’t change no matter what he’s saying, it’s the same DEEP ROUGH GROWL all the time, and the only time he sounds friendly is when he’s talking to his kid in dragon-language. And his face doesn’t move, and he hardly ever looks me in the eye, and he’s got eyes like a goat, the same as Perdita. And – and I thought maybe it wasn’t his fault, if it was all because Azalar had turned him into a dragon and kept him under a compulsion spell all these years, but it wasn’t true! He just went along with being a dragon and burning and killing because he liked it! And until I knew that, I was almost starting to want to be friends with him. I thought he was sorry about the bad things he’d done, and wanted to try and learn how to be a human. But he can’t, can he? Even if he can’t turn into a dragon any more, because of Auric taking his magic away, he’ll still always be a monster inside, won’t he?’

‘I don’t think Gardas will ever be a normal human, no,’ said Xanthus. ‘But I’m not human either, am I? Nor is Granny Flint. Lots of people aren’t human. Now – Beatrice, will you have time to brew a truth potion this evening?’

‘I can, but it’ll take time to settle,’ said Beatrice. ‘We can come along tomorrow afternoon, if you’re free then.’

‘That sounds good,’ said Xanthus. ‘And, Auric, I can see you the day after tomorrow, in the morning, and Paul after school, if that’s any good.’

Everyone nodded at these arrangements. As Beatrice and Gardas climbed on the broom to head home, Beatrice called good evening to Paul and Auric, heading off on their borrowed mop. Neither of them replied.


	10. Chapter 10

In fact, Beatrice’s cottage was only a mile or so off, along country lanes that they could easily have walked, if it hadn’t been easier to let the broom carry them rather than the other way round. As they approached, they heard a plaintive bleating, interspersed with thudding.

‘Oh, come on, Bessie, you know perfectly well how to open the latch!’ called Beatrice. As they flew lower, they saw a strange white creature which looked like a cross between a hairy sheep and a unicorn (except that it had two long horns, less curly than a ram’s, which it had been using to butt the fence) lift the latch on a fenced enclosure, inside which were four sheds standing on big stone mushrooms. The white animal, and the three who followed it, all climbed up to their own sheds, checked that they were undisturbed, climbed back down, and then stood outside, waiting.

‘All right, I’ll be with you soon!’ called Beatrice. ‘It’s time for their evening milking,’ she explained. ‘Do you know how to milk a goat?’

‘No.’

‘It’s not too hard – I’ll show you.’

Gardas didn’t have much experience with animals, but he knew when something was odd. ‘Goats aren’t both sexes at once, are they?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Well, those have all got teats – and horns and beards.’

‘So? Lots of nanny goats have beards. Nearly all goats have horns, unless they’ve been cut off. Admittedly, nannies’ horns are usually a bit thinner than a billy goat’s would be, but Bessie’s always been a bit butch. Don’t get the wrong idea, though – she’s a mother many times over, and grandmother, and she’s my best milker. When I first had her, when she was a kid, I used to borrow her mind – that means I’d put myself into a trance, and ride on her mind and guide it – until she’d learnt that she was only to eat the brambles that overhung the lanes, and not wander into people’s gardens and start eating their roses. So, when she was trained, I let her take herself for walks, and she trained her kids, and they trained theirs.’

‘Can you really do that? Train a goat to obey you?’

Beatrice laughed. ‘I’m a witch – what do you think?’

She fetched buckets and demonstrated to Gardas how to milk Bessie and the next goat, and then she held Perdita and fed her while Gardas practised on the other two. The multiplication spell on the bottle had stopped working, now that they had goats around, but Beatrice had plenty of time to transfigure goats’ milk into human milk, feed it to Perdita, and wash out the bottle, while Gardas got to grips with coaxing milk out of the two remaining goats. It was almost sunset by the time he had finished.

‘We need to rig up some kind of chair to keep Perdita safe, so she can sit up and watch while we both work, without the risk of a goat treading on her,’ said Beatrice, as they went into the house. It was a thatched cottage with one big kitchen/dining/living/working room downstairs, and three sloping attic bedrooms above, plus an outhouse a hygienic distance away. ‘Now, I know it’s getting late, but if you could help me with the first stages of the truth potion, we should have it ready in time to cool and thicken overnight.’

‘I can’t be much use now,’ muttered Gardas. ‘I can’t even do magic.’

‘Oh, that’s not a problem. A lot of witches’ work doesn’t depend on magic, at least the way a wizard would understand it. And some of it does – but that could be precisely where I need you.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, I do quite a bit of potions research work – nothing involving human body parts or rare animals,’ she added hastily. ‘Mostly I work on herbs, and testing whether goats’ milk has any of the magic properties traditionally claimed for it. So far, I’ve discovered seven magical powers that it definitely doesn’t have, plus three new recipes for cheese. But going back to the herb research – if the two of us work side by side, following identical recipes for a potion, and the only difference is that I’m a witch and you’re not, then if our two potions work equally well, it means the power is in the herbs and I can teach any of my neighbours how to brew it. But if mine works and yours doesn’t, it means that the power derives from the magic of the witch, in which case it’s worth testing whether it does the same thing with different ingredients, provided it’s the same witch brewing it. Do you see?’

‘I could be – useful?’ Gardas hadn’t even tried to imagine a situation in which the loss of his powers could be an advantage.

‘Of course you can. But right now, is it getting near Perdita’s bedtime?’

‘Oh – uh, yes.’ Perdita’s goat-like eyes were bloodshot with tiredness, and she was kicking her legs and flailing her arms. Gardas felt ashamed of not having noticed how late it was getting. He was a bad father, but considering he was a mad evil dragon, that was hardly surprising, he thought. Beatrice found a large bowl that would do for a baby-bath, and warmed water – in a cauldron over a fire, not by magic – for Gardas to fill it. 

Bath-time was usually one of Gardas and Perdita’s favourite times, with Perdita splashing happily while Gardas chattered to her in Dragonese. But now that Auric’s spell was gone and he knew what he had done in his dragon-form, being dragons together didn’t seem funny any more. Even Perdita’s feeding-bottle seemed obscene, an attempt to turn a terrifying monster into something cuddly and funny. ‘ _Your daddy’s an evil monster, did you know that?_ ’ he murmured to her. ‘ _Your big brother Paul can tell you that. I’m a mad evil villain with a horrible voice and a creepy face that doesn’t move, aren’t I, little hatchling? It’s all right, they won’t let me stay with you for long now. The parenting instructor will come and see that I’m no good and she’ll take you away from me, or Xanthus will see that I’m mad as well as evil, and lock me up in a dark dungeon where I can’t hurt anyone. Maybe Beatrice can look after you. She’s nice, you like her, don’t you? You’ll be all right – well, as all right as anyone can be, when they’re a part-dragon with weird goat eyes. But Beatrice likes you anyway, so you’ll be safe with her._ ’

Perdita began to wail loudly, whether because she realised something was wrong, or from sheer exhaustion. Gardas dried and dressed her, and tried to put her in her basket to sleep, but she screamed even more at being left alone. Beatrice mouthed something from the far end of the room which, when Gardas came close enough to hear over the crying, turned out to be, ‘Do you need help, or is she just tired?’

‘She’s found out that I’m a monster,’ said Gardas.

‘Do you mean you’re a monster because of the bad things you’ve done, or because you’ve been a dragon?’ asked Beatrice sharply.

‘Does it matter? It’s the same thing.’

‘It has to matter,’ said Beatrice, without looking up from stirring her cauldron. ‘Because when Perdita is growing up, and learning to deal with being neither entirely human nor entirely dragon, you might be the only other part-dragon she knows, and if you grow up hating yourself for being part-dragon, she’s going to feel that she has to hate herself, too.’

‘Why can’t she hate me instead? It’s my fault she’s part-dragon.’

‘It isn’t a fault at all!’ said Beatrice. ‘She’s a beautiful silvery Grey dragon. Did you know the real Grey dragons breathe blue flame that can break enchantments, as well as healing people? And they live almost entirely on moonlight – the only time they need to eat is when they’re brooding on a clutch of eggs and can’t get out to fly in the moonlight, and even then they’re pretty much vegetarian, eating mushrooms or flowers or berries.’

For a moment, Gardas started to relax, leaning forward to listen to Beatrice’s voice, the way he had when she had told him and Auric stories, back when they were teenagers and he had stupidly allowed himself to believe that he was innocent and could be her friend. After the way he’d betrayed her – what was she thinking, letting him stay in her house? He flinched away from her and stood up abruptly.

‘Have you got work for me?’ he asked. ‘Or can I go to bed?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry! You must be very tired, after all the upheaval of today. Do you want some supper, first? I’ve got bread and cheese, apples…’

‘I’m not hungry.’ Gardas didn’t think he’d ever be able to face food again without remembering gobbling up innocent men, women and children. Besides, the less he ate, the sooner he could die and all this would be over. No – he wasn’t supposed to die yet. He was supposed to repay what he could of his debt by working for Beatrice. ‘I can wait until you’ve eaten, then wash up,’ he offered.

‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be up for a while yet, so I can keep an eye on Perdita until she settles, and bring her up to my room when I go to bed. Would you like a calming potion? You’re looking agitated, as well as tired.’

‘NO!’ Gardas almost screamed, and then, trying to control himself, ‘I’m sorry. I mustn’t. Calming potions do bad things to me.’ That had been where the trouble had started, after all.

‘Hmmm, maybe we need to work out which ingredients you’re allergic to. But in the meantime, just get some rest. There’s a bed made up in the room on the left as you go upstairs.’

There was indeed. The King of Cideria had known they were coming – had Beatrice expected to invite Gardas to live here, or had she made the bed in this room with Paul or Auric in mind? There were windows cut into the sloping sides of the room, with parchment in the frames to let in the light, but frames that swung open so that he could, if he wished, look out at the stars now, or over the misty Ciderian valleys at sunrise tomorrow. Under the window at the far end from his bed was a wash-stand with a jug of water and a towel. There was a shelf of books beside the head of his bed: several books on dragon behaviour, plus a book he remembered Beatrice lending him at school, _How to Train Your Demon_. Despite the title, it had turned out not to be a manual at all, but a story about a young man who had accidentally befriended a demon. The books lying under it, by the same author, were obviously sequels: _How to Hunt a Shaman_ and _How to Save a Demon’s Fox_. Probably Beatrice had left them there in the hope that Paul would enjoy them.

Perdita had quietened by now, so perhaps she had been crying just because their voices had been keeping her awake. Gardas blew out his candle, and lay on his bed, remembering…


	11. Chapter 11

It had been after the duelling practice in which he’d changed into a dragon for the first time, when the teachers had managed to change him and Beatrice back into human form. Azalar had been questioned under truth potion and cheerfully confessed to giving Gardas an attack of diarrhoea and to turning Beatrice into a snail, though he had insisted that these were ‘just jokes’ and that he certainly hadn’t been about to stamp on Beatrice, but was just trying to scare her, and after all, she’d broken the rules by rushing into the ring, hadn’t she? But he insisted that he hadn’t had anything to do with turning Gardas into a dragon, and nobody knew who else might have done it. Gardas himself certainly didn’t know any spells for shape-shifting, but he was fairly sure the teachers didn’t believe him. At any rate, all three of them were banned from the duelling club and forbidden to go for walks outside the school grounds for the rest of the year, and Gardas had been warned that if he was in trouble one more time, he would be expelled.

Azalar had taken him aside afterwards. ‘Gardas, what are we going to do about that temper of yours?’ he said. ‘It’s not as if you’re a little boy any more, and turning into a dragon like that is dangerous. What if you’d killed Beatrice?’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ Gardas had whispered miserably, biting back the retort that he had had every reason to think that _Azalar_ was planning to murder Beatrice.

‘No, but it’s that anger of yours overflowing. I think you’d better have some calming potion now, to stop anything like this happening again. I’ve got some that I made in Potions class today.’

‘Shouldn’t we ask the nurse?’ Gardas had asked.

‘Gardas, as my slave I order you to take this potion.’

So he had drunk it. It had certainly tasted much nicer than most of the potions the school nurse handed out: like honey mixed with the spices Gardas loved, such as pepper, ginger, turmeric, and mustard. He had fallen happily asleep, and had sweet, wonderful dreams of Beatrice. Azalar had sniggered when he caught Gardas hastily casting purifying spells on the bedclothes and his pyjamas the next morning – and every morning that followed, and sometimes on his robes during the day if he didn’t find his way to a private place quickly enough – but Gardas hadn’t cared. He was in love! This was like nothing he’d ever experienced before: not like the friendship he and Beatrice had had up till that point, nor like the various times he’d fancied girls or women he was too shy to speak to, nor like masturbating in the privacy of his own bed when he was younger, which he had enjoyed until Azalar had started insisting on watching him do it, and then ordering him to do it as and when Azalar wanted him to. This was pure, free from all that, just being a normal young man who was in love! It was certainly much more real, he was certain, than Auric and Beatrice’s polite courtship, holding hands at every opportunity and vowing to stay in touch when Beatrice went back to Cideria, and to get married as soon as Beatrice finished her apprenticeship. This was the real thing!

Unfortunately, Beatrice hadn’t thought that Gardas’s feelings for her were the real thing. She had been convinced that her love for Auric was the real thing, and that Gardas was a good friend who had now started to make a nuisance of himself because he’d got a crush on her, and that he needed to find a girlfriend who was attracted to him. As time went on, she had become more and more irritated with him for ‘pestering’ her, and spent more and more time alone with Auric, and Gardas had realised that he was not only dying of unrequited love, but also losing the only two friends he had.

In the end, he had confessed his feelings to Azalar, who had been the only one left who was still speaking to him, and had begged Azalar to teach him how to brew a love potion. Azalar had gaped at him at first, and then said, ‘A love potion? But Gardas, don’t you realise they’re illegal? They’re as bad as compulsion spells – the only reason the ingredients are even allowed to be published is so that people can spot the signs that someone might be brewing one, and report him to the police.’ Gardas had gone on pleading, until Azalar had sneaked into the library and stolen a book from the restricted section (for once doing this himself, as Gardas had already had the threat of expulsion hanging over him) and found the recipe. It turned out to be similar to Gardas’s calming potion, with the same honey base and hot spices, except that the pepper and mustard masked the more important ingredients: nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla.

By now, they had been heading towards fifth-year exams, and Beatrice had been starting to get anxious. Gardas had apologised for the way he had been pestering her and distracting her from studying, and offered her some ‘calming potion’ as a peace offering. Beatrice, reasoning that it wasn’t really cheating if it was just helping her to stay calm when revising, and not a performance-enhancing drug which would constitute cheating in the exam itself, had accepted it.

The potion had worked. Beatrice had slipped away from the girls’ dormitory that night to find Gardas, and they had had sex in a remote stock-cupboard, and it had been fantastic, and everything they had both dreamed of. And then it had been over, and suddenly Beatrice was crying and angry, and shouting, ‘You put a spell on me, didn’t you, you filthy little creep!’ and Gardas had shouted back, ‘Well, you’re disgusting! You’re Auric’s girlfriend – you’re engaged to Auric! Why’d you dump him for a “filthy little creep” like me?’ Their shouting had woken everyone in the vicinity, and Gardas, still standing in the stock cupboard with his robes undone and his underpants on the floor, had confessed to the headmaster that he had stolen a restricted potions book and brewed an illegal love potion to entrap Beatrice into having sex with him. He had hoped that if he confessed everything – or nearly everything – willingly and at once, then Auric would understand that it wasn’t Beatrice’s fault, and maybe the two of them would get back together.

He had been expelled, of course. He hadn’t thought about the consequences beyond that, and hadn’t realised that the headmaster would need to call the police, or that he would be kept in prison before being tried in the Seat of Justice for magically-assisted rape, or that, despite having openly confessed his guilt, he would _still_ be questioned under truth potion, in case there was anything he was holding back. Fortunately, the inquisitor hadn’t thought to ask him to confirm under truth potion that he had stolen the potions book himself and brewed the potion without any assistance. He had managed to keep Azalar’s name out of it.

There had been talk of stripping Gardas of his magic there and then, as he couldn’t be allowed in a school but an untrained wizard was a danger to everyone. Azalar had pleaded for mercy for his wayward young attendant, who, he said, was like a younger brother to him. He pointed out that Gardas had honestly confessed his guilt; that Gardas’s early life in the potions farm had left him so traumatised that it wasn’t surprising if he didn’t know the difference between right and wrong; and that he, Azalar, would have finished school in another few weeks and was willing to devote himself single-mindedly to reforming and re-educating his servant in an isolated environment with no distractions until he was ready to be reintroduced into society.

At the time, young Gardas had been tearfully grateful for being allowed another chance. Remembering it now, adult Gardas was furious, at himself and Azalar and the court indiscriminately. Why hadn’t they questioned _Azalar_ under truth potion? Why hadn’t they realised that just because Gardas himself was evil, it didn’t follow that Azalar was good and trustworthy? Why had he, Gardas, not killed himself after the first time he turned into a dragon, when he knew how dangerous he was, instead of staying alive and hurting Beatrice like that? Or failing that, why hadn’t he killed himself when Azalar took charge of him and started taunting him until he transformed again? And why hadn’t he killed Azalar a lot sooner than he did, if it came to that? Gardas lashed himself with his tail for having been so vicious, so uncaring, so _stupid!_ He snorted, setting fire to the thatch, and bellowed with dragon despair.

Beatrice rushed into the room without knocking. ‘Lie down!’ she commanded. The human words sounded strange to Gardas’s dragon ears, but her commanding tone was unmistakable. He obediently lay down on the splintered remains of his bed on the floor, while Beatrice picked up the jug of water and threw it at the (not yet very large) blaze in the thatch. Water and wet, burnt bits of thatch dripped onto the bedclothes, but at least they missed the books.

‘Can you turn yourself human?’ Beatrice asked. Gardas tried, shrugged his wings apologetically, and shook his head.

‘Would you like me to turn you back into a human?’

He nodded. Beatrice kissed him on the snout, and a moment later he was lying on the damp remains of his bedding, surrounded by the damp remains of his clothes, which had burst off when he transformed. Embarrassed, he pulled the blanket over himself.

‘Did you know you could still transform?’ asked Beatrice.

‘No. Auric said he’d taken away my magic. I didn’t transform at all on the journey here.’ But then, of course, he had been having seizures as soon as he started to have thoughts that would lead him in a dragonish direction. He had thought that anything would be better than seizures. Then he had thought that the guilt of remembering what he had done was worse than seizures. But unexpectedly turning into a dragon – perhaps burning down the house and killing Beatrice, next time it happened – was even worse than just remembering.

‘Maybe it isn’t something to do with wizards’ magic,’ pointed out Beatrice. ‘Maybe it’s just something that you are. We can ask Xanthus tomorrow.’

‘What do we do now?’ After all, if he turned into a dragon again, Beatrice might not be there to stop him. He certainly couldn’t expect her to sit up all night to watch him and make sure that he didn’t. And if he got angry while awake – or had turbulent dreams while asleep – he couldn’t stop himself transforming. And calming potions didn’t work…

‘Beatrice,’ he said suddenly, ‘do calming potions normally have honey and mustard and pepper in them?’

‘Not hot spices like mustard and pepper,’ said Beatrice. ‘You can add a little honey to some of them, but not large quantities because it gives people a sugar high. I didn’t know that at sixteen, though.’

‘Neither did I,’ said Gardas.

‘Did Azalar trick you into drinking a love potion first, then?’

‘I think so.’

‘Yes – I wondered, later on, if he had. At the time, I knew it was weird the way your behaviour changed overnight, but I’d put that down to just being a hormonal teenage boy. But later on, I wondered what Azalar had been up to, and why. I wondered whether he was jealous of my relationship with Auric because he fancied me – or Auric, for that matter – but now I don’t think he was capable of being attracted to a man or woman in any normal way. He just seemed to want control – and I don’t even know whether he wanted to arrange sex between us because that turned him on sexually, or whether it was just a ploy to get you into trouble so that you’d be expelled from school and he could have absolute power over you. Do you have any ideas?’

‘No. But it doesn’t make it not my fault. I didn’t have to brew a potion to make you have sex with me, even if Azalar fed me one to make me fancy you.’

‘No. And I didn’t have to be unfaithful to Auric, just because I’d been fed a potion to make me fancy you.’

‘It wasn’t your fault! I raped you.’

‘Sort of. It’s – borderline between magically assisted rape and magically assisted seduction, I’d say. And you were as much a victim as I was.’

‘No I’m not. I’m a convicted rapist.’

‘One sort of rape. But – well, for comparison, if you’d used a compulsion spell, or magically conjured ropes to bind me – or if you hadn’t bothered with magic, and just made use of the fact that you were bigger and stronger than I was – then it would have been worse in some ways, maybe better in others. It would have been physically painful, obviously, and I’d have been terrified and humiliated and angry – and very confused that someone I thought of as a friend would do that to me. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t have been confused about my own feelings. I’d have known for certain that I wasn’t attracted to you, that I was innocent, and that you had launched an unprovoked attack on me. But as it was, the potions tricked me into thinking I was in love with you, and tricked you into thinking you were in love with me, and so it felt exciting, physically and emotionally, at the time – until the spell was broken, and we were wondering why we’d done it. And after that, it made it hard for me to trust my feelings about anyone, because I couldn’t be sure they were my feelings. Did you feel that way, too?’

‘No. I just knew I was evil, but Azalar still wanted me as his servant anyway, so I went with him.’

‘Did you ever have – feelings for Azalar that you think might be the result of a potion?’

Gardas considered. ‘I don’t think so. I just knew I belonged to him.’ He paused. ‘Paul’s my son, isn’t he?’

‘That’s right. I always used a contraceptive spell when I was with Auric, because we’d agreed that we weren’t ready to be parents, until I suddenly realised that I desperately wanted to have your child, right away, for no reason whatsoever. That in itself should have told me I wasn’t thinking straight. So – have you thought about how you’re going to tell Paul? Or shall I?’

‘I don’t know. Not yet. He’s got enough to deal with as it is, right now.’

‘Maybe. If he asks directly, we’ll have to tell him, though. Anyway, if I move you to the other spare bedroom, do you think you’ll be able to sleep without turning into a dragon again?’

‘I don’t know.’ Perhaps turning into a dragon only happened when he was angry, as Azalar had said, and he felt calmer now, even without the need to take a calming potion. But he needed to know something first. ‘Do you forgive me?’

‘Oh, yes. Years ago. I forgive as much of it as was your fault, and I understand that a lot of it wasn’t. At the moment, I’m less sure whether I can forgive Auric for what he’s done to you. Can you?’

‘No.’ After all, Gardas reminded himself, he was evil, and not in a position to judge what was right or wrong, and certainly not whether Auric had done anything wrong to him. And if you haven’t been wronged, you don’t have the right to forgive.


	12. Chapter 12

‘Aren’t you going to eat any breakfast?’ said Beatrice.

‘I don’t deserve breakfast,’ mumbled Gardas miserably.

‘What’s deserving got to do with it?’ said Beatrice, puzzled. ‘You need to eat. Or don’t you like this sort of meal?’

The plate of fried eggs and vegetables smelled delicious. It would be perilously easy to be happy, living and working with Beatrice and eating this well. ‘I shouldn’t be eating meals with you. I should be waiting till the end of the day, then eating any scraps the goats don’t want.’

‘The goats can fend for themselves. You’ve already got up, milked them, let them out to browse, fed and changed Perdita, fed the chickens, and collected their eggs. You’ve got to keep your strength up.’

‘Because I need to look after Perdita?’ Gardas was aware that he was failing her. He didn’t even have the magic to transfigure goats’ milk into human milk for her.

‘I could use Perdita as a lever to make you eat, but – look, she’s not the only dragon who needs taking care of.’

‘Paul isn’t a dragon,’ Gardas pointed out. ‘Anyway, he doesn’t want me to look after him.’

Beatrice sighed. ‘I meant you’ve got a responsibility to look after yourself. You matter just as much as Perdita does.’

‘You said we had to die to self.’

‘Did I? When?’

‘When we were fifteen. You thanked Auric for taking time to help me with my homework, and you said to him, “The gods can only work through us when we die to self.” So I knew I needed to die to self by not asking Auric to help me, because I shouldn’t be wasting so much time studying anyway, because I was only there to be Azalar’s slave. So I never asked him again. And I tried to stop thinking about what I wanted to do when I was free, and just think about working for Azalar.’

‘What? I thought you didn’t even believe in any gods!’

‘No, but you did. And I believed in you. You were the first person I knew – apart from little kids – who really believed in a god. The priests who came to teach us at the potions farm didn’t mean what they said, they were just part of the con – or maybe they weren’t,’ Gardas admitted. ‘Maybe they really believed that if they could teach kids to believe in their god, and then those kids got killed, they’d go to heaven, or a better reincarnation, or something. But you weren’t creepy like those priests. You were pure and honest, and you really believed. So I wanted to be like you. Only you didn’t talk to me much about what you believed, so I listened to what you said to other people.’

Beatrice groaned, laying aside her own half-eaten breakfast. ‘And did I say anything else really stupid and self-righteous and ill-thought-out?’

‘When Auric was complaining about having to retake Broom-Flying, and not liking his Brooms teacher, and saying that she always told him off and wasn’t pleased whatever he did, you said Granny Flint was snappy like that sometimes, and anyone can do their best for a kind master, but the real test is working as hard for a master you don’t like, as if you were serving your god. So I tried to do everything Azalar said, as if he was a god.’

‘But – but I meant a master who’s a bit grumpy, not one who’s outright evil! I didn’t mean you had to obey Azalar when he told you to do something you knew was wrong!’

‘I didn’t know. I might think something sounded wrong, but I’m not allowed to decide whether it is or not. You said we shouldn’t be judgemental, because only the gods have the right to judge.’

‘And I was probably the most judgemental person there,’ sighed Beatrice. ‘Oh, Gardas, do you mean that for the last fourteen years, you’ve been hanging on every word I said when I was a stupid, pompous fifteen-year-old, without knowing what I even meant by what I said, and without ever wondering whether I might have been wrong?’

‘Yes,’ said Gardas. He was still trying to understand why Beatrice seemed so upset. ‘Was that the wrong thing to do?’

‘Who am I to judge?’ snapped Beatrice sarcastically. ‘Sorry, that was unfair. I just didn’t realise that you were listening to what I said even when I wasn’t listening to myself, and it sounds as though I’ve done at least as much to screw your life up as Azalar did, and I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?’

‘No.’

‘Even if I admit that I was wrong, and I’m sorry?’

‘No. You said the gods only forgive our sins if we forgive those who wrong us. So we can’t forgive people, if we can’t judge that they’ve wronged us. And we mustn’t judge. So I can’t forgive anyone, so I can’t be forgiven. So I’ve got to be punished until I’ve paid for what I’ve done.’

Beatrice munched another mouthful of her tepid breakfast, thoughtfully. ‘Paying,’ she repeated. ‘That’s an interesting idea. Can you tell me, whom are you paying, and what are you paying them in?’

‘I don’t know. There has to be payment.’

‘Yes, but – well, when a pie-seller at the market sells pasties, which people want to eat, he expects to be paid in coins, which he wants, because he can use them to buy whatever he needs. But if you don’t know who the people are whom you’re trying to pay, and what sort of payment they want – or whether they want anything at all – you can’t know whether you’re satisfying them.’

‘I’ve killed people. Thousands of people. I don’t know what they want.’

‘Exactly. If they’ve gone to their gods, perhaps they’re content where they are, and don’t want anything. Or if there isn’t any life after death, there’s no them to want it. Or have any of them come to haunt you, and tell you that they want vengeance and you’re not allowed to eat breakfast?’

‘No,’ Gardas admitted. ‘The dead don’t want vengeance. Only the living.’

‘Well, from what I’ve heard, the living people of the Downs were content to exile you and strip you of your magic. They didn’t demand any punishment beyond that. And the only people outside the Downs whom you’ve done anything to are Paul and me. Well, I certainly don’t want you to hang around being miserable for the rest of your life…’

‘Paul does.’

‘That’s probably what he thinks he wants, at the moment,’ Beatrice agreed. ‘But in practice, if you spend the rest of your life feeling guilty about having hurt him, he’ll feel that he has to spend the rest of his life grieving for the loss of his arm and his magic, instead of making the most of the abilities he has. So what he actually needs you to do is to set a good example: to recover from your damage as much as possible, live with what can’t be repaired, and settle down to live a worthwhile, cheerful life, and show him that he can do the same.’

‘Don’t your gods demand payment?’

‘No. In the first place, I don’t think you can trade with the gods, because there’s nothing that they need. They don’t sell; they give. They give the sun; the sun gives light and warmth to awaken the sea and the earth to life; living creatures give life to their children. But just supposing the gods did want something from you – why would they rather have your misery and death, rather than your willingness to live and find out what you’re good at and what you can do to help people – and to enjoy any blessing they send your way?’

Gardas winced at the word ‘enjoy’. ‘I thought they loved the suffering,’ he said.

‘I didn’t mean they loved the fact that you’re suffering! I meant they love you even when you’re suffering, and so do I.’ She tried to put her arms round Gardas, who pulled away just in time.

‘NO!’ he said. ‘The potion – does it still make you want me? It’s not real, it’s just the potion – I’m sorry, I’m sorry…’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Beatrice, standing back calmly. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you – and I didn’t mean I loved you the way I love Auric – use your intelligence, Gardas, you know love potions only work until the victims have sex with each other! I meant that I love you – well, the way you love Perdita. Or the way I might love Paul, when I’ve had more chance to get to know him. I want to adopt you, and give you all the care and encouragement that you should have had when you were a child, and never did. I can’t promise that I’m wise enough to be a very good mentor to you, but I might know a bit more than I did at fifteen, at any rate. What do you think? Could that work?’

Gardas couldn’t quite manage to speak, but he managed a small nod.

‘Good. Well, as your adoptive mother, I’m telling you that you need to eat. One of the things I’ve learnt is: HALT. It’s short for: don’t get Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. Any of those states weakens us, so that we slip back into whatever our worst habits are. Mostly, this is advice people give to reformed drunkards – I don’t know whether you get drunk much?’ (Gardas shook his head.) ‘That’s good, then. But it works in the same way for people who are drawn towards melancholy or quarrelling, or hurting themselves, or witches or wizards who are drawn towards Dark magic. Now, I don’t know whether your turning into a dragon last night was anything to do with that, but you were obviously tired; you hadn’t eaten since lunchtime – and a big frame like yours needs plenty of food, you’re much too thin for your height; you’ve been lonely your whole life; and after the way everyone has treated you, you’ve got plenty to be angry about. I think feeling some anger is justified – but not giving into so much irrational, undirected anger that you set fire to the roof. After all, next time, I might not be there to put out the fire in time.’ Gardas hung his head. ‘It’s all right, I know you couldn’t help it. But have I given you a sufficiently unselfish reason why you need to eat: so that I don’t have to keep putting out fires?’ 

Gardas picked up his fork and began to eat at last. The meal was cold enough by now to feel something like a penance. He had to admit, though, that it still tasted good. When he had finished, he asked, ‘Hermits live on their own, don’t they?’

‘Well, yes,’ Beatrice said. ‘And there are plenty of stories of saints and prophets who’ve gone out into the desert to be alone and to fast and pray, and who have been blessed by a god. But that isn’t because being alone makes it easier to be holy, or because if they can overcome their body’s need for food then it means they can control themselves in everything. It’s because, if they can be good even though they’re weakened by hunger and loneliness, and if they can trust in their god even when they no longer feel his presence and can only fall back on remembering what they’ve been taught, then it can help them to depend on the god all the more. But it’s more of an advanced course than an introductory lesson – and so is the thing about dying to self. It’s not a good starting point for someone who’s barely been allowed to develop a sense of self in the first place. Oh, and Gardas?’

‘Yes?’

‘Well done for having the confidence to argue with me.’


	13. Chapter 13

That afternoon, Beatrice and Gardas walked to the appointment with Xanthus. Beatrice held a hand on the shaft of her broom to steady it as it wobbled along, about four feet off the ground, carrying bags containing numerous bottles of truth potion. She had brewed a large quantity, some of it for Xanthus, in case he wanted to offer it to other patients as well as Gardas, and some for Granny Flint, who dealt with most of the complicated disputes of law and justice. She had also, at Gardas’s request, agreed to keep a few bottles at home. He suspected that there might be times when he needed to tell her about something he felt uncomfortable talking about – or times when he needed to talk to Paul, and would have no other way of ensuring that Paul believed him.

In the meantime, he carried Perdita, and chattered to her about everything they passed: ‘ _Look at that valley! When you’re a big dragon, you’ll spread your wings and fly out over that! Look, there’s a Gules dragon perching on that cottage. Look, she’s swooping down to pounce on that rabbit – oh, it got away. Well, lucky for the rabbit, but it’s hard on the poor dragon, isn’t it? You’re lucky you’re Grey; when you’re in dragon-form, you can live on moonlight and won’t need to chase rabbits._ ’

‘It looks as though Perdita helps you talk, even without a truth potion,’ said Beatrice cheerfully. ‘Have you thought about talking to her in human language as well? Maybe pointing at something and telling her its name in Dragonese, and then translating it?’

‘I don’t know the names of most of what’s round here anyway,’ Gardas pointed out. ‘What’s that plant with the spotted leaves?’

‘That’s dragonwort,’ said Beatrice. ‘If you make its leaves into a tea, it’s good for coughs and chest infections, digestive problems, and urinary tract infections, or you can wait for it to cool and use it to bathe wounds or haemorrhoids. Back when people thought dragon-pox was spread by dragons, they used to treat it with a mixture of dragonwort and wormwood, but I don’t know whether that worked. I think it probably got its name, and the reputation for curing dragon-pox, because the leaves are spotted with silver, like a Grey dragon. It has pretty blue flowers in the spring, and the bees love them.’

It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and Xanthus was out practising jumps when they arrived. ‘Ah, Gardas, good to see you!’ he called cheerfully. ‘Could you bear to take a towel and rub me down? I find one disadvantage to being a centaur is that some parts of me are quite hard to reach.’

Gardas rubbed the centaur dry and fastened a rug round him, and the three of them settled down in the stable as before. Xanthus made tea for himself and Beatrice, Beatrice fed Perdita a bottle of milk, and Gardas measured out and swallowed a dose of truth potion. It was less bitter than he remembered, with a faint tang of apples.

‘It doesn’t taste as bad as last time,’ he said. ‘Are you sure it’s the real stuff?’

‘Quite sure,’ said Beatrice firmly. ‘It might be just that you’re getting used to the taste. Then again, I make mine with cider, where some recipes use beer – it’s all right, it won’t get you drunk, and it still works as a truth potion. It’s just a different flavour, that’s all.’

‘Well, do you feel ready to start?’ asked Xanthus.

Gardas sprawled in his comfy armchair, letting his long arms dangle over the sides, pleasantly tired after the walk followed by massaging a centaur. ‘All right.’

‘What sort of person do you think you are?’

‘Evil.’

‘Really?’ said Xanthus. ‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve known since I was nine. Lankin told me. He was the man who ran the potions farm.’ 

Xanthus didn’t say anything, so Gardas explained what a potions farm was. After a few minutes, Beatrice said, ‘Gardas, do you really need me here? I could take Perdita outside and sit with her in the field until you’ve finished.’

‘No,’ said Gardas. ‘You need to be here. So does she. You need to know why I’m evil.’

Xanthus said, ‘And you trust someone like Lankin to tell you you’re evil?’

‘He’s the expert, isn’t he?’ said Gardas. ‘And you want to know about me being evil. That’s why you were asking all those questions yesterday about lying and stealing. You weren’t just checking whether I was mad, you were checking whether I was evil as well, weren’t you?’

‘Partly, yes.’

‘I used to steal from the larder loads, at the potions farm,’ said Gardas. ‘Couldn’t steal much in one go, or Lankin would notice. But we never got much to eat if we didn’t steal, and he’d beat us raw if he caught us, so the ones who were best at it had to go in. I was the best.’

‘Did you eat all the food you caught yourself, or share it with all the others?’

‘I couldn’t share it with all the others at once,’ Gardas pointed out. ‘Not if I’d just got two apples, or a slice of bread, or summat. But I tried to get round to whoever was hungriest – the ones who were all weak and tired. 

‘And it wasn’t always for food to eat, sometimes it was other stuff, like when one of the babies kept crying all the time because he’d got a sore bum, and keeping us all awake, so me and Kira planned that she’d distract Lankin, and I’d get into the larder and nick some oats, so we could make him an oatmeal bath to see if that made him feel better. Only Lankin worked out what Kira was up to, and came in and grabbed me, and then he took Kira and me up to his office, and I thought he was going to beat us, but instead he gave me his cane and told me to beat Kira, “beat her till she bleeds.”

‘Well, I thought, “That’s out of order!” ‘cos Kira was only six and it was my idea really, and Kira cried if she fell over and bumped her knee or anything, so I told Lankin Kira was only doing what I’d told her to, so instead he should give me two beatings, mine and then hers on top. And I was scared, ‘cos I knew how much it hurt getting a normal beating from Lankin, and with a double one I reckoned I’d barely be able to walk afterwards, never mind sit down, but still, better me than her. So Lankin kept telling me to hit her, and I wouldn’t, and then I got so angry that I hit him instead, so he tied me to a chair with his belt and said, “Now you’ll see the results of your disobedience.”

‘I was scared that he was going to hit her way harder than he’d told me to, but he didn’t. He put on some overalls and gloves, and then he unlocked the top drawer of his desk and took out a knife, and he cut off her lips and then her ears and then her nose, and there was blood all over her. I should’ve fought him, I should’ve managed to get up off the chair, but I couldn’t until he’d done, and then I just managed to rock it until it fell over. So Kira was screaming and I was crying, and she’d got snot hanging out of where her nose should be and she couldn’t even blow it properly, and Lankin wiped his knife on my shirt. And then he took his overalls and gloves off, and let me go, and then he marched us both outside, in front of everyone, and he said, “I caught Kira trying to steal from the larder, so I told Gardas to punish her. This is what he did to her. The rest of you should think before you steal from me again.”’

‘And did you tell them it wasn’t true?’ asked Xanthus.

‘No. Because it was sort of true. Lankin did that to Kira because I wouldn’t hit her, so it was my fault for not doing what he said in the first place. Kira tried to tell them it wasn’t true, but she couldn’t talk properly because of not having any lips, and she looked so weird that no-one wanted to stay around and listen to her anyway. And the next day, she was gone. Lankin said she’d gone where the bad children go. I suppose he’d’ve killed her anyway, because we were being reared for slaughter, just like on any other sort of farm. But if it hadn’t been for me, he wouldn’t’ve hurt her like that before he killed her, and then shown her to everyone. She was beautiful, before he did that.’

‘So, what happened after that?’ asked Xanthus.

‘After that, Lankin told me to beat anyone who broke any of the rules. The first few times, he watched me to make sure I did it hard enough, but when I knew what was enough, he just left me to it. It had to be hard enough to make them bleed, so I practised until I could aim well enough to keep hitting just one place until it broke the skin, instead of thrashing about all over the place, and then it was over sooner. And once I learned to stop thinking “This is my friend that I’m hitting,” and just think of their bum or the palm of their hand as a target, and forget it had a face attached, it started to be fun, and that’s how I knew I was evil.’

‘Why did he make you hurt people, rather than doing it himself?’ Xanthus asked.

‘Because he could see the evil in me,’ said Gardas. ‘He used to say when I’d given someone a good beating, “You enjoyed that, didn’t you? You’re a sick, evil little beast, that’s what you are.” I didn’t have any friends any more, because I was the house bully, Lankin’s pet monster. He wouldn’t have stopped at beatings, either, if I’d been there longer. I knew one day he was going to hand me the knife to start training me on cutting bits off and killing people, so I just kept on doing what he wanted until then, because once I had the knife, I could kill him, and then we’d be free.’

‘You didn’t have friends any more? So, did you have many friends before all this started?’

‘Well, Kira was my best friend, because she was like a little sister,’ said Gardas. ‘But I got on all right with most people at the potions farm for playing football and thinking up pranks to play and stuff. I mean, everyone outside thought potions farm kids were weird, and we all hated Lankin, so all we’d got was each other.’

‘So, do you think maybe Lankin set you up to hurt other people because you were too popular?’ suggested Xanthus. ‘Maybe he thought you could be the leader of a rebellion, if he couldn’t find a way to make everyone hate you. It doesn’t sound to me as if you were a nasty child to start with.’

Gardas shrugged. ‘All right, maybe I wasn’t. Maybe Lankin was evil first, and he put the evil in me. But it’s there now, isn’t it? Can you make me not-evil?’

‘I can’t make a truly evil person stop being evil, if they don’t want to change,’ said Xanthus. ‘But if you want to be not-evil, I think it proves that you’re not completely evil to start with.’

‘I thought I’d stopped being evil,’ Gardas admitted. ‘But then I turned into a dragon again last night. The only reason I’d stopped doing it before was that while I had the compulsion spell on me, I couldn’t remember how to do it.’

‘What’s that got to do with being evil?’ said Xanthus.

‘Because that’s where it comes from. The first time was when I was sixteen, when I was angry with Azalar, and the anger made me turn. He pretended he wanted to take me in hand and reform me, when really he just wanted to use me as a weapon, just like Lankin. But he couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t been evil enough to turn into a dragon anyway.’

Xanthus stared at him. ‘And didn’t anyone tell you that it’s normal for were-dragons to experience their first full transformation as teenagers?’ he asked incredulously. ‘None of your teachers, your doctor – anyone?’

‘No.’

‘Do you remember, before you first turned into a dragon, anyone commenting that you looked unusual?’

‘Yeah, of course. I’m ugly and my face doesn’t show how I’m feeling and I’ve got yellow eyes with weird pupils and I’m too tall and I talk too slowly and my voice doesn’t change.’ Almost everyone Gardas had ever met had made at least some of those comments.

‘And it never even occurred to anyone that goat-like eyes are normal in were-dragons? Or that most were-dragons have some other features in their human form that mark them out as different – like being unusually short or tall, or Perdita’s silver hair, or a birthmark? And the expressionless face and mask are absolutely classic – when you’re in dragon-form, your head would be a hard, bony mask, and your emotions would show more in the way your ears twitched, or the movements of your wings and tail, and the type of fire you blow, and of course you don’t have any of those ways to express yourself in human form. Didn’t you have any lessons in school on were-dragons?’

‘I can only remember one on dragons at all,’ said Gardas. ‘But – why can I still turn into a dragon? I thought I’d lost my magic.’

‘Did you mean to turn into a dragon, last night?’

‘No. It just – burst out of me.’

‘Could you turn yourself back into a human when you wanted?’

‘No. Beatrice had to turn me back.’

‘And was it any different from when you turned into a dragon before?’

Gardas considered. Even without the compulsion spell, most of his memories of the past fourteen years were confused, because it hadn’t been easy to think coherently when Azalar was taunting him, one minute berating him for being an evil monster, and the next telling him which people to incinerate. But even so – ‘I could think on my own, before,’ he said. ‘Azalar didn’t like riding on my back, but he’d tell me to turn myself into a dragon, and tell me where to fly to and what to set fire to, and I could remember what he’d said while I was out there. And I could talk, too. Last night, I couldn’t think anything – I just felt scared and angry and confused, and then glad because a boss-human had come in and could tell me what to do. Only, when Beatrice had been in the room with me for a few minutes, I could remember that she was a person called Beatrice, and understand that she was asking me if I could turn back into a human, and I tried and found I couldn’t. And I couldn’t talk, either.’

‘That’s your answer, I’m afraid,’ said Xanthus sadly. ‘As a human, you’re an adult, but lots of other intelligent species, like dragons or centaurs or kobolds, live longer and take longer to grow up. So, when you were a teenager, the dragon part of you would have been a toddler, and he’s still only a young child now, but as long as you had your magic, the human part of your mind could tell him what to do. Nearly all were-dragons are born with magic powers, and they can use them to control when and where they transform, and to keep their human intelligence. Now that you don’t have that – well, to be blunt, it means that losing your magic has made you far more dangerous, instead of less.’

‘So I have to be put down,’ said Gardas. ‘Or locked up, anyway.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Xanthus. ‘It might be that you can find ways of managing your dragon-self, or ways of avoiding turning into a dragon in the first place. For the moment – well, you can’t go around without someone who can control you in dragon-form or turn you human again, but you’re supposed to be under supervision anyway, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, sir – doctor. Beatrice is supposed to be watching me all day. But what about at night? It happened at night last time, and I can’t ask her to share my room!’

‘Well, no. That’s a harder one. Do you know what triggers your transformations?’

‘I think it happens more when I get angry,’ said Gardas. ‘Beatrice says: don’t get Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. And I might get angry when I dream about all the bad stuff I’ve done – and bad stuff that’s happened to me – or angry about not being able to sleep.’

‘Yes, you might. Can you think of a way round that?’

‘Beatrice offered me a calming potion last night, but I wouldn’t take it,’ said Gardas. ‘I panicked, because Azalar gave me something he said was a calming potion once…’ and he told the story he and Beatrice had worked out of what must actually have happened.

‘So, if you could be sure it was a genuine calming potion, would you be willing to take it?’ asked Xanthus.

‘Yes.’

‘You can watch me making it, if you like,’ offered Beatrice. ‘I can even have a go at teaching you to make one for yourself.’

‘Thank you,’ said Gardas. ‘I’d like that.’

‘Good. And the other thing I’d like you to at least once a day is to think about what went well over the day, what went badly, whether you turned into a dragon, and what might have triggered it. You can just think about it by yourself, or write it in a diary, or talk about it with Beatrice – whatever you find helpful.’

‘Talking about it with Beatrice,’ said Gardas. ‘She helps me see things so that they make sense. If you don’t mind?’ he added to Beatrice.

‘Of course I don’t,’ she said. ‘Though I’d rather it wasn’t late at night when we’re both tired.’

‘Agreed,’ said Xanthus. ‘In the evening before going to bed can be a good time, but not if it just stirs up all the worries of the day all over again. You’ll find something that works.’

They agreed to meet Xanthus again in a couple of days’ time, and set off home. As they walked, Beatrice said cautiously, ‘You know, Gardas, I’m glad you were able to talk so openly about everything, but if you’re going to be this honest again, can we leave Perdita with a baby-sitter next time?’

Gardas blinked. ‘Why?’

‘Well, babies understand a lot of what we’re saying, long before they can talk.’

‘Why shouldn’t she hear? She needs to know what I’m like.’

‘Yes, but this wasn’t so much about what you’re like, as about what happened to you. Children shouldn’t have to grow up thinking things like that are normal.’

‘They were normal, for us,’ Gardas pointed out.

‘Yes, but they shouldn’t have been. They needn’t be, for Perdita.’

Gardas considered for a long time in silence, while Perdita waved indiscriminately at human passers-by, Gules dragons, squirrels, and trees. ‘Yes,’ he said in the end. ‘I wasn’t allowed to be innocent, ever. But that doesn’t mean she can’t be.’ He considered again. ‘So – we pretend the world is nice until she’s old enough to find out that it isn’t?’

‘We help her to notice what is good in the world, first, and we find tactful ways to explain the things that aren’t. And we help her grow into someone who can make life better instead of worse. And we don’t pretend that normal everyday things like doing a poo or getting undressed are “not nice” just because they’re things that grown-ups prefer to do in private, so that she doesn’t grow up worrying that she has to pretend not to notice them.’

Gardas nodded. That made sense.

‘It won’t work, though,’ he said as they arrived back at the cottage.

‘What won’t? Being careful what we say around Perdita? Or the calming potion?’

‘The potion might stop me turning into a dragon. But I’ll still be evil. Xanthus says he can’t make an evil person change.’

‘Weren’t you listening? He said that if you want to be not evil, it proves you’re not completely evil anyway. I don’t think you are, and neither does he.’

‘Well, I am.’

‘I thought you hung on every word I said!’

‘Everything except when you tell me I’m not evil.’ Gardas thought about this for a moment, and then burst out laughing at his own inconsistency. Beatrice looked startled for a moment, and then she laughed too, and Gardas laughed all the more, with joy at having made her laugh. Perdita chuckled too, not knowing what was going on, but just relieved that the grown-ups around her were happy. Gardas suddenly understood why dogs liked to roll over on their backs and have their tummies tickled. It wasn’t just an admission of surrender to a superior, but revelling in their own absurdity, and knowing that they were absurd and still loved and accepted and safe.


	14. Chapter 14

‘We’d better start making the first batch of calming potion as soon as Perdita’s asleep,’ said Beatrice. ‘It needs a couple of hours to settle before you drink it, so we can get on with other jobs afterwards, before we go to bed. We could take Perdita’s basket up to my room as soon as she starts to get sleepy, if the darkness makes it easier for her to sleep – or would you rather keep her down here where we can keep an eye on her, until we go up?’

‘I ought to have her in my room,’ said Gardas. ‘She’s my daughter. But if I turn into a dragon again, I could hurt her. And if I’m drinking this calming potion, I might not wake up when she needs me.’

‘I’m sure you would – it’s not a heavy sleeping draught, it just helps you not to get too emotional,’ said Beatrice. ‘But just while you’re trying to get yourself under control and stop turning into a dragon unexpectedly, it doesn’t make you a bad parent if you let me take over looking after Perdita at nights. You do most of the work in the daytime, after all.’

They milked the goats, and Gardas fed Perdita while Beatrice went into her herb garden – securely fenced to keep the goats out – to collect the ingredients for the calming potion. Perdita screamed suddenly, shrilly, as Gardas took the empty bottle away. It didn’t sound like her hunger-cry – more like the scream of a dragon who had been stabbed through the heart by some knight, or impaled herself trying to strangle someone in spiked armour, or any of the many other ways in which dragons in stories were put to death. Wind, maybe? Gardas put her over his shoulder and rubbed her back to try to help the burp find its way out. Perdita only gasped for breath for long enough to start screaming again.

‘ _Hey, squirmy worm, it’s all right. There’s no knight. Why lash your tail? Does a rash you ail?_ ’ Gardas put Perdita on the floor for a moment while he took the cauldron of warm water off the fire, and then undressed her – which wasn’t easy with someone who was holding herself rigid one moment and flailing wildly the next – to examine her properly. No rash or sores, no fever, but her arms were trembling. ‘ _Are you cold, little daughter? Let’s go in the nice warm water._ ’ Perdita thrashed as if she had never seen a bath before, or as if she were a fire demon terrified of being extinguished.

‘Can you manage?’ asked Beatrice, coming back in.

‘I think she’s hurt, but I can’t see what’s wrong. It’s not just wind; I’ve checked that.’

‘Do you think she’s started teething?’

Gardas felt ashamed of not having thought of something so obvious. Gardas rinsed a hand in the bathwater and inserted one finger into Perdita’s mouth. Sure enough, her lower gum was red and swollen, and she was drooling more than usual. She relaxed a little as he massaged her gum, and then she chomped down hard on his finger. As the tooth hadn’t yet come through, she wasn’t able to break the skin, but she had a very hard, insistent grip. She needed something to chew on – a wet rag, maybe? Extracting a bruised, gnawed finger, Gardas put Perdita back down on the floor while he went to find a rag and dip it in cold water from a jug. Perdita tried it for a moment, spat it out, and began to scream again.

‘She might prefer ice,’ suggested Beatrice. ‘If you bring it over here, I can cast a freezing spell.’ Gardas picked up the rag and did as instructed. Perdita accepted the rag-icicle, and gnawed on it happily while Gardas bathed her, chattered to her, tickled her, dried her, put a fresh nappy on, dressed her and wrapped her in her blanket ready for sleep. Then she began to scream again. Gardas and Beatrice took it in turns to try to soothe her, but it was midnight before she finally fell asleep.

‘Have you got the energy to stay up till the small hours, brewing and then waiting for the potion to thicken?’ asked Beatrice.

‘Yes,’ said Gardas, stifling a yawn. ‘I’m too jangled to sleep, anyway.’ To be a good parent, you need to be calm. To be calm, you need to get enough sleep. To get sleep, you need the baby not to be crying. For the baby not to go on crying for hours and hours, you need to be a good parent. He was a bad parent. He would never get his parenting licence now, even if he didn’t turn into a dragon again. He couldn’t even cast a freezing spell to give Perdita the ice that soothed her. She’d be better off without him.

‘I’m jangled, too,’ said Beatrice. ‘But jangled isn’t a good state to be in for learning how to make a potion, and neither is tired. Would it be better if we leave the potion for tomorrow, and just find something to do that can help you relax enough to get some sleep?’

‘Probably.’ He was too tired to argue with anything anyone said, right now.

‘What might help?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe you could tell me a story?’

Beatrice yawned. ‘All right. I’ll do my best. This is one my grandmother taught me that she heard once from a kobold who’d heard it from a dragon:

‘Once upon a time, there was only God. Nowadays, God is everywhere and anywhere, in us and around us, in the worlds and in the stars and in the spaces between them. But then, God was only everywhere, because there were no worlds and no stars for Her to be in.

‘So God breathed out a ball of fire and smoke, and it grew bigger and bigger. At first, you could not see the brightness of the fire, because the smoke was too thick to see through. But the bits of smoke jostled and bumped against each other and decided they liked each other, and decided to stay together. The larger clusters of smoke and sparks stayed hot and bright, and they became the stars. The smaller ones grew cold, and they became the worlds, and they huddled near to the stars so that the stars could warm them, like kobolds huddling against the warmth of a dragon. The smallest clusters became moons, and they danced around the worlds, and loved their worlds as the worlds loved their stars.

‘Now one world became pregnant when a rock flew into her, and she gave birth to a beautiful moon. The moon loved her mother the world, and the world loved her, too, and they flew around each other even while they flew around their star, which they called the sun. The moon loved her master the sun, and whenever he gave her his golden light, she poured some of it out to share with her mother. But because the moon was weaker than the sun, as a Grey dragon is smaller and weaker than a Gold queen dragon, the sun’s golden light turned silver when the moon passed it on.

‘This world wore a cloak of blue sky, and under it, a bright mirrored dress made of seawater that looked bluer still as it showed the sky her own blueness. The sea loved the moon more than anyone, and so the sea danced with the moon, towards her and away from her, and thus the tides came. And when the water leapt high up the back-spikes of the world, it caught in puddles in the cracks between her scales when the sea danced away again. And the sun warmed the puddles and breathed life into them, and when the sea came up to claim his puddles again, he rolled their life back into himself once more. And thus living creatures came to swim in the sea. 

‘These creatures were not fish, nor dragons, nor kobolds, but tiny creatures who swam to and fro. They did not know how to look for a mate, and so each creature grew big enough to split into two such creatures, and then each swam off alone. But even so, they could be lonely and want friends, and so they swam to where they could smell others like themselves. And in time, they learned to make coded smells to send messages to each other, and thus the first language was spoken.

‘Then, one day, one of these creatures split, and because the two new creatures could speak to each other, one of them said to her sister: “Why should we split up? If we swim together, we can help each other. We can sniff for smells in different directions, and if I smell some food, or someone to be friends with, I’ll tell you. And if you smell some food, or someone to be friends with, you can tell me.” So they swam together, and shared the food they found with each other, and soon, they were big enough to split again, so that the two became four. And thus the first great creature was born, and she grew different body parts, who found that they were good at different jobs. Some were better at seeing the sun’s light, and they were called eyes. Some were better at moving the creature along, and they were called limbs. Some were better at passing messages on, and they were called nerves.

‘Now this great creature had no mate, so when she had children, they were almost all just like their mother and no-one else. But as the sun breathed his life into them, as well as the life they had from their mother, some of them grew just a little different. And in time, they learned how to look for a mate, and to have children together who were a little like their mother, and a little like their father, and a little like nothing anyone had ever seen before. And so the second language was spoken: the language that animals speak to each other. And it could say far more than the first, because it was a language full of sights and sounds and colours, not just smell. And thus the first great creature became the grandmother of the plants, and the fungi, and the animals.

‘So the plants grew into many different kinds: algae and ferns, pine trees and oak trees, dryads and tree-trolls. And the fungi grew into many kinds: yeasts and moulds, mushrooms and mushroom-people. And the animals grew into many kinds: sponges and worms, snails and starfish and flies, fish and frogs and lizards. And meanwhile, the tiny creatures live on as well. Some are enemies who can kill us; many more live peacefully within us, as happy in the warm and wet of our guts as their grandparents were in the warm and wet of those first puddles warmed by the sun. And so all of us, plants and animals and fungi and tiny creatures, are cousins, born of the same sea and the same sun.

‘Yet the mountain trolls are not our cousins, for they were born of the fires within the world, not of the sea and the sun. And this is why the sun gives life to creatures of the sun, but makes mountain trolls slow and sleepy. Yet they are our neighbours, created by the same God who made the stars and the worlds alike, and She loves them as She loves us.

‘Now there was a dragon born, a little Gules dragon, and she decided not to leave her eggs lying around, as all the dragons before her had. She called to her mate, the Black dragon: “Let us look after our eggs. I will sit on them and keep them warm while you hunt, and you can sit on them and keep them warm while I hunt. And when they hatch, we will hunt for food to give our children, so that they never need to eat each other. And when they are old enough, we will teach them how to hunt.” And thus the first family was born.

‘So the dragons grew wiser, because they had time to learn from each other, instead of always fighting and hunting. Some of them were the ancestors of the birds, and some were the ancestors of all who have hair: of bats and deer and squirrels, of humans and kobolds and centaurs. And some are the ancestors of the dragons we see today: Gules and Black, Blue and Green, Brown and Bronze, Grey and Gold.

‘And to this day, Grey dragons live on moonlight and can only fly on a moonlit night, and Gold and Bronze dragons live on sunlight and can only fly by day. But Gules dragons, Black dragons and Brown dragons eat the beasts of the earth, and Blue dragons eat the fish of the sea, and Green dragons eat green plants, and they can fly at any time.’

‘That’s a good story,’ said Gardas, yawning.

‘How are you feeling? Ready to sleep now?’

‘I think so.’

‘Do you want to sleep in the middle bedroom? The bed in the one at the far end is only good for firewood, now.’

‘No, it’s all right. The mattress is fine, it’s just nearer the floor now. And if I do turn into a dragon again, it can’t fall any further.’


	15. Chapter 15

Over the next few weeks, life settled into a routine – as far as a household consisting of a witch, a teething baby, and a magic-damaged were-dragon ever has a routine. Witches, Gardas learned, were public servants, and Beatrice’s real responsibility was to come at once, any hour of the day or night, when anyone called for her help: usually an illness or injury or a birth, in humans or domestic animals. Her potions research, and making up batches of the potions that people were likely to need quite often, was just something she did in between emergencies. Of course, witches had other duties, too, like defending the kingdom when danger threatened. Gardas didn’t know whether Beatrice had been one of the witches who had created the spell to seal the Downs off from neighbouring countries until Azalar was defeated, and he didn’t really want to ask.

Of course, Beatrice now also had the job of keeping a close eye on Gardas to make sure that he didn’t turn into a dragon unexpectedly, which meant that, if she was called out, Gardas – and Perdita – had to get on the broom and come with her. Word had got around that Gardas was a were-dragon, but nobody seemed intimidated. Generally, they chuckled and made some comment along the lines of, ‘I see you’ve got your familiar with you,’ or, ‘Is this your backup transport in case the broom breaks down?’ Gardas would nod and make some reply like, ‘Don’t worry, I’m house-trained,’ and people laughed in amazement that this – creature – could talk, and generally offered both Beatrice and him a cup of tea.

They were more comfortable thinking of him as not-human, he realised. If they thought of him as a human, they wouldn’t be able to forget that he was big and ugly, a deranged war criminal with weird goat-eyes, and so he couldn’t be allowed to forget it for a moment, either. But like this, he was Beatrice’s pet who was impressively close to being human, and could actually be surprisingly useful as a nurse, and who was, they understood, under Beatrice’s control and therefore safe. 

The thought made him smile – or at least, he thought he was smiling. The first time they emerged from one of these house-calls, after changing the dressings on a lonely widower’s ulcerated leg, Beatrice asked quietly, ‘Were you all right, back there? Harry makes jokes like that to everyone, but he doesn’t mean to be unkind.’

‘I know,’ said Gardas, surprised. ‘I liked him.’

‘You were looking rather solemn.’

‘I’m smiling inside.’

Before long, they acquired a more familiar sort of familiar. One wet, stormy night, when Gardas had just managed to get back to sleep after getting up to give Perdita a midnight feed, nappy change, wet rag to chew, cuddle, and lullaby (Perdita still slept in Beatrice’s room at night, but Beatrice had had such a tiring day that she hadn’t even woken as Gardas came in to attend to the baby), he heard crying all over again. Was Perdita awake once more? No – the crying was coming from downstairs – outside. Had someone brought him _another_ of his illegitimate children that he didn’t remember fathering? He still had no recollection of Perdita’s mother.

As he opened the door, a bedraggled cat shot in. This, clearly, was the creature that had been yowling. Gardas stirred up the fire and put a little wood on it – it had just started to be cold enough for it to worth leaving a fire to smoulder overnight – and poured out a saucer of milk. The cat licked herself clean, tasted the milk warily, and then lapped it up. Her fur, as far as he could see in the firelight, seemed to be tortoiseshell. Gardas knelt beside her on the rug, crooning gently to her in Dragonese, wary of reaching out to stroke her in case he frightened her.

The cat edged closer to the fire, perilously close to where sparks could set light to her fur. Gardas moved between her and the fire, to try to block her off. ‘ _Careful, now!_ ’ he said. ‘ _I don’t want to have to put a cat out, on a night like this._ ’ The cat edged back and settled down a few feet away, watching him intently. ‘Have to put a fence round the fire soon anyway,’ he continued, in Westron, the language of humans in the Downs and Cideria. ‘Baby’s going to start crawling any time soon. Then climbing – have to put a lock on a cupboard, for knives and Beatrice’s potions ingredients and stuff.’ He didn’t know how to make a complex mechanical lock, but probably Beatrice knew a locksmith. Beatrice herself would be able to seal things by magic, but that would keep him out, too – and he was fairly sure, thinking back to his own childhood, that a simple latch on a cupboard five feet off the ground would be no match for a determined toddler.

The cat soon settled in as a part-time member of the household. Beatrice called her Eski, for no reason she could explain except that it suited her, and the cat seemed happy to answer to it, so Gardas used the name, too. Eski alternated between two days in attendance with them, and three days away – perhaps off on a hunting trip – but when she was there, she was _there_ , slipping out of the cottage only to relieve herself. She never quite came near enough to let anyone stroke her, but she followed Gardas everywhere, watching him as if he were a mouse-hole. She rode the broom behind him if he came out on a journey with Beatrice, or stayed in with him if Beatrice left him behind, perhaps because he had just put Perdita down for a nap and it wasn’t a good idea to risk waking her by putting her in the sling for a broom-journey. When Gardas walked to sessions with Xanthus – which Beatrice was happy to let him do on his own, unless Xanthus had asked to see the two of them together, or Gardas wanted Beatrice to be outside supervising Perdita if he was going to talk about things a child shouldn’t have to hear about – Eski walked up the lane in front of him, tail in the air, and came in to listen to everything Gardas and Xanthus discussed.

About a month and a half after the Downslanders had arrived in Cideria, and a month after Eski had turned up, Xanthus had his next group session with Auric, Paul, Beatrice, Gardas, Perdita – and, inevitably, Eski. Paul grinned when he saw her. ‘Hello, Eski,’ he said. ‘Found your way over here without us, did you?’

‘You know her?’ said Gardas.

Paul ignored him, but Auric said, ‘Oh, yes – Eski turned up as soon as we’d arrived. She comes and goes – I think she’s mostly just fond of Paul, because she manages to time her visits for when he has a day off school. She even rides on the broom with him when he comes over here to visit Xanthus – mind you, she comes with me when I do, too. And she’s been quite fond of me ever since she found out that I could transfigure silverfish into real fish.’

‘At our house, she’s been making do with milk,’ said Beatrice.

‘You know her, too?’ said Auric.

‘Oh, yes.’ Beatrice smiled, and did not elaborate.

After asking the three humans and one were-dragon how they were getting on, Xanthus turned to the cat. ‘So, Eski,’ he said. ‘As a parenting instructor, how would you say Gardas and Auric are coping?’

‘Well, Gardas is fine with Perdita, so far,’ said the cat – or rather, the kobold. No-one had actually noticed her changing shape, but she was now a furry, cat-headed humanoid nearly Paul’s height, sitting with her back supported by Xanthus’s flank. ‘He has moments when he gets depressed and withdraws into himself, but generally he’s fine – gives her lots of affection, talks to her, mostly in Dragonese but sometimes in Westron, keeps her healthy and happy. He’s maybe not doing much to help her develop, like giving her time lying on her tummy to help her learn to crawl – he’s mainly worried about keeping her out of danger – and he hasn’t really given her any toys of her own, apart from her feeding bottle, and a rag to chew on.’

Gardas hung his head. It hadn’t occurred to him that giving babies toys was something parents were supposed to do. He didn’t recall having any personal possessions when he was little. After Azalar’s parents had bought him, Azalar had sometimes allowed Gardas to touch some of his playthings – for example, when Azalar wanted someone to play a game against, and Auric wasn’t around – but the only things Gardas had owned which had been exclusively his had been his wand and his school robes and textbooks. But now, he could see Paul glaring at him accusingly, as if he were not merely a mad evil were-dragon minion of the late Dark Lord, but also stinginess personified.

‘At the moment it doesn’t really matter, because he gives Perdita so much attention that he practically is her favourite toy,’ Eski went on. ‘But she’ll want more things to chew on as her teeth come through, or things to stack or roll around as she starts to get more mobile. And it’s time Gardas had a bit of practice working with older children, so that he’ll know what to expect from Perdita when she’s older…’

‘He’s not practising on me!’ said Paul hastily. Gardas gazed down at the strawy floor, trying not to get drawn into the conversation.

‘Auric generally gets on well with Paul,’ Eski continued, ‘but when he says something Paul doesn’t want to hear, like moving into Beatrice’s cottage even though Gardas is still there, and Paul gets angry, Auric just drops the subject instead of trying to talk it through with him. Paul’s trying to catch up on having a normal childhood, and Auric doesn’t seem sure what he wants Paul to be or do, now that he’s finished being the Chosen One who will save the Downs from Azalar, and is just an ordinary, non-magical human boy.

‘Beatrice is doing a fantastic job, and if there was a licence for adopting adult were-dragons, she’d have passed the test. She’s done a lot to build up Gardas’s self-confidence and make him feel at home, and she’s got him settled into a bedtime routine…’

‘WHAT?’ exclaimed both Paul and Auric. Paul just sounded baffled. Auric sounded outraged, and menacing. Gardas remembered that although he could no longer do magic, Auric could – and that he, Gardas, could still turn into a dragon and might do so if he let himself panic, which was quite hard not to do if he was at wand’s length from an angry wizard…

‘Talking over the day’s events, a bedtime story, and then giving him his calming potion before they go off to their rooms,’ explained Eski. ‘By nine o’clock, he’s fast asleep until the next time Perdita needs feeding.’

‘My mother reads you a bedtime story?’ said Paul, with a hint of a snigger in his voice.

‘Or tells me one,’ said Gardas. ‘She’s good at telling stories.’

‘Can’t you read to yourself?’

‘Yes,’ said Gardas defensively. No-one had explained to him how to read until he was eleven, but he’d practised hard, and picked it up well enough to work his way through his school textbooks. After fourteen years in which he hadn’t needed to do much reading, he was out of practice, and it wasn’t his idea of a relaxing way to spend an evening. Besides, letting a book tell him a story in the solitude of his room could never be as comforting as letting Beatrice tell him one as they sat by the fire.

‘Sorry,’ said Paul, still sniggering. ‘It’s just – being told a bedtime story – it’s something for little kids.’ He grew quieter, thinking about it, and eventually said in a very different voice, ‘My dad – my adoptive dad – used to read to me when I was really little. When I was six, I said I didn’t want him to any more, because I could already read by myself, and reading aloud was too slow. But now – if he was here now, I’d let him read to me, even if he did all that embarrassing over-acting with different accents for each character. And he’ll never read me a story ever again, because Gardas ate him and my mum when I was eleven!’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Gardas.

‘Sorry isn’t good enough!’ retorted Paul.

‘No,’ Gardas agreed.

‘Is there anything Gardas could do that would be good enough to make up for all the harm he’s done you?’ asked Beatrice.

‘No,’ said Paul.

‘So what do you plan to do about him?’ Beatrice asked. ‘Go on hating him for the rest of your life?’

‘Yes.’ Paul sounded pleased with himself at having won this argument. _At least he can enjoy hating me,_ Gardas thought. He supposed it must be like the way that he himself had quite enjoyed being in an ongoing feud against Lankin’s tyranny, at least in the days when he had still had friends to hate Lankin with, before what happened to Kira. Afterwards, he had still hated Lankin, but it had all been tangled up with hating himself for being Lankin’s tool. And later still, in all the years when he had been Azalar’s dragon, he had never been able to enjoy resenting Azalar, not only because he had been too busy hating himself in his human moments, and too unreflective to feel anything but bloodlust while he was the dragon, but because he had been guiltily aware that Beatrice said you should love your enemies. Azalar was certainly Gardas’s enemy, therefore Gardas ought to love him and welcome everything Azalar did to corrupt and degrade him. It must be so nice to be Paul, to know himself to be innocent and right, and everyone else to be corrupt and wrong or evil, especially Gardas…

 _No_ , Gardas told himself suddenly. _Beatrice doesn’t think I’m evil. Xanthus doesn’t think I’m evil. I don’t have to accept that Paul is right and they’re wrong just because Paul hates me and the others don’t_.

‘Are you more angry with Gardas, or afraid of him?’ Beatrice asked.

‘I’m not afraid! He couldn’t kill me even before. And when he’s with you, he won’t do anything to me, ‘cos I’m your son and he likes you. I just hate the way he…’ Paul seemed lost for words.

‘I know,’ said Gardas. ‘I ate your parents, burned your arm, took your magic. And I can’t do anything to make things better. Sorry’s not good enough.’

‘It’s not just that!’ shouted Paul. ‘I hate the way you’re pretending to be _nice_ now, that’s what’s so creepy. Going around with my mother, kneeling at old ladies’ feet to trim their toenails – no wonder she likes you better than me! She’s telling you bedtime stories when you’re a grown-up, but she’s never told me one in my entire life, and I’m too old for them now! And you’re not, because you won’t grow up, because if you act like a little kid, people act as though nothing you do wrong is your fault!’

‘Paul,’ said Auric, ‘if you’re not afraid of Gardas, could you bear it if we went to stay with Beatrice for a few days? Then she could tell stories to Gardas and me, and if you don’t want to listen, you could always read a book instead.’

Paul sighed. ‘All right. Not just yet. Maybe at Solstice?’

‘That sounds good,’ said Beatrice. ‘And in the meantime – would you like it if you and I had a few conversations, with just the two of us? Maybe here with Xanthus, or somewhere else on our own? I’m sorry I’ve made you feel rejected, but I would like to have the chance to get to know you.’

‘All right,’ said Paul. ‘Here with Xanthus is fine.’ Xanthus confirmed that it was fine with him, too.

‘Good,’ said Eski. ‘In the meantime, Gardas, Auric – I’m finding you both some babysitting assignments.’


	16. Chapter 16

‘If you can teach me to be a parent, can you teach me how to get Paul to like me?’ Gardas asked. It was two evenings later, and Beatrice was out meeting Paul at Xanthus’s stable, leaving Gardas and Eski to mind the sleeping Perdita. Eski had returned to cat-form, after adopting humanoid form long enough to give the goats their evening milking. She was a brownie, a domesticated species of kobold who could disguise themselves as cats, or, if householders were allergic to cats, as flames in the hearth. Traditionally, they crept out when the humans were asleep to help with the housework, ‘but I wasn’t going to do that while I was watching you,’ Eski had explained. ‘The whole point was to see whether you could cope without me. But I don’t mind lending a paw now and then, now that you know what I am.’

Now, she said, ‘I can’t make him like you. Nobody can do that. But if you’re going to be a parent, you’ve got to be fit to take care of your children even when they hate you. You’re not too bad with Perdita now, but if you want to know whether you’ll cope when she’s older, you need to think about how you are with children in general. I’m going to ask you some questions, and I need you to be honest.’

‘Do you want me to take a truth potion?’ asked Gardas.

‘If it helps.’

Gardas took one of the bottles of potion from the cupboard, and poured himself a dose. It tasted bitter again, perhaps because he was nervous.

‘Suppose you’re out flying and you see children playing, and they throw a ball that bruises your wing,’ said Eski. ‘How does it make you feel?’

‘I might want to eat them,’ Gardas admitted. ‘But I haven’t turned into a dragon since the first night here.’

‘All right, what about when you’re human? You go to the market in Drakespring, and there’s a child screaming, lying down in the street and beating his hands and feet on the cobbles. What do you do?’

‘I don’t go shopping,’ said Gardas. ‘People mostly give food to Beatrice, when she comes to visit. Or we grow it here.’

‘What if you take Perdita to be blessed at the great Temple in Drakespring? And there are children there who keep turning round and staring at you? What do you do?’

‘My daughter’s not going near the Temple,’ said Gardas. ‘I hate the gods – it’s not just what happened in the potions farm, it’s what happened to me when I started trying to live the way I thought Beatrice’s god would want me to, and now it turns out I got it all wrong and she didn’t mean things the way they sounded to me. But I think maybe gods just aren’t good for were-dragons, we’ve got the wrong sort of brains for them or something. Only some of the stories Beatrice told me are the ones dragons or kobolds tell her about their gods, so it can’t be just that – it’s not were-dragons in general, it’s just me. So maybe Beatrice should take Perdita to the Temple to have her blessed, but I don’t want to go!’

Eski butted her head sympathetically against his leg – only briefly, but it was the first affectionate gesture she had ever shown him, and his heart warmed at it. ‘You don’t like crowds of humans, do you?’ she said.

‘No.’

‘But Perdita might. Grey dragons usually live in colonies, not in solitary caves like Blues. Suppose, when Perdita’s about eight, she wants to celebrate her birthday by taking a dozen school-friends over to the pond on the village green, for a swimming party, with lots of splashing and shouting? Would you go with them?’

‘Of course I would!’ said Gardas. ‘That pond’s quite deep in the middle. I need to be there to make sure no-one drowns.’

‘That’s good,’ said Eski. ‘And what if the following year, she wants a party where everyone dresses up as knights?’

Gardas shuddered. ‘She won’t do that – will she?’

‘She might think it’s fun.’

‘It’s not funny! Knights kill dragons! If she’s going to be like that, she can’t have a party at all!’

‘And if one of her friends’ mothers says you’re being unfair?’

‘It’s none of their business.’

‘All right. Supposing, after you’ve had a quarrel about all that, and Perdita’s gone to bed, you realise that it’s her birthday tomorrow, and with all the arguing about the fancy dress party, you haven’t even remembered to get her a present. You remember that there’s a fair on the village green which is still open late into the evening, and it’s got lots of stalls selling toys and ornaments and delicious food – and you’re not working for Beatrice any more, you’re working for yourself and you’ve got money to spend. But there’s no-one in the house except you and Perdita. What do you do?’

‘I’m not leaving her on her own,’ said Gardas. ‘Someone like Lankin could get in.’

‘They might, yes,’ Eski agreed. ‘So, what do you do about getting her anything to celebrate with?’

‘Why do you keep going on about birthday parties? I’ve never had a birthday party in my whole life! When it was Azalar’s birthday, his parents made me stay up all night conjuring decorations to make the house look nice when he woke up, and he always just sneered and said my ideas were stupid or babyish, and now I can’t even do magic at all, so I couldn’t conjure decorations like that for Perdita. But – if I’ve got some food in the house, I can make something nice for breakfast for her. And if I’ve got a rag-bag of old clothes, like the one Beatrice has, I could sew some of them together to make a new dress or a toy or some bunting or something. Or we could go out to the fair and have breakfast there before school, because if it’s still open late at night, it’s obviously not planning to move on for a while yet. She could choose her own present then.’

‘Could you put up with the crowds?’

‘If Perdita wants to be there.’

‘Now, while you’re at the fair, Perdita tells you that she’s got a history project that she was supposed to be working on all term, and she couldn’t think what to write about, and it’s due in tomorrow. What do you do?’

‘Why didn’t her teacher tell her what to write about?’ Gardas asked.

‘Because she wanted the children each to pick something they were interested in, and research it for themselves, so that she didn’t have to read thirty identical projects. If the pupils all do their own research, the teacher might even find out things she didn’t know before.’

‘That’s stupid,’ said Gardas. ‘Teachers have to know more than children. That’s why they’re teachers.’ But then he remembered how some of the teachers at his school – the friendlier ones, anyway – had looked surprised and impressed when Beatrice had told them about how witches in Cideria did something, and how sometimes they’d even written it on the board and told everyone to write it down.

‘Well, that’s how it is. What do you do?’

‘I don’t know! Why didn’t she tell me earlier?’

‘Because she forgot. Or didn’t want to think about it. Sometimes if children can’t solve a problem, they don’t think there’s anyone they can ask for help.’

‘I never did have any… well, maybe I did,’ Gardas admitted. ‘I don’t think Azalar would have helped me with my homework, but Auric didn’t mind, when Beatrice asked him to. Maybe he just hadn’t thought of it before. But Perdita has to know I can help her.’

‘So, what do you do to help?’

‘I don’t know! I don’t know much history. Azalar didn’t want me to take it as one of my options, and I got expelled at sixteen, so – I could tell her about me and Azalar, couldn’t I? And about the whole war of the Downs – Auric and Paul could tell her what they did, too. Then she’ll have a project that’s completely different from any of the others.’

‘That’s a magnificent idea,’ said Eski. ‘So, you get the project done, but you’re still angry with Perdita for lying to you all through the past three months when you asked whether she had any homework and she said, ‘No, nothing,’ and went out to play. What do you do about that?’

‘Give her a dose of truth potion every day and make her tell me everything,’ growled Gardas.

‘That’s a bit heavy-handed, isn’t it?’

‘What? Lankin wouldn’t even have bothered with truth potion – he just thrashed us until we owned up to stuff, whether we’d done it or not.’

‘But you’re not Lankin.’

‘No. And that’s why I’m not going to hit Perdita, ever. Because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to stop. I mean, I might be able to beat her until I drew blood and then stop, the same as when I was a kid, but then – I’d start looking forward to the next time she did something wrong, so I could do it again. I don’t want to be like that ever again.’

‘That’s one good reason not to hit her,’ said Eski. ‘Can you think of some others?’

‘Well – people hitting me never made me want to stop what I was doing,’ said Gardas. ‘It just made me want not to get caught. So Perdita might be like that, too. And – giving her truth potion won’t make her not want to lie to me, either. Or maybe it will when she’s on truth potion, but afterwards, she’ll just want me not to give it to her again. So – what I need to do is make her see why she didn’t need to lie to me. When I’m talking to you or Xanthus and I want to take truth potion, it’s because I want you to help me and I know I need to tell you everything, only it’s too difficult to talk otherwise. I need to listen to Perdita, now when she cries, and when she starts talking, so that she won’t find it difficult to talk.’

‘Yes,’ said Eski.

‘Were those – the right answers?’

‘They were your answers,’ said Eski. ‘You didn’t have loving parents of your own, so you couldn’t look at what they did and copy that, and you thought it through for yourself. With some of these questions, you had to think about it for a while, and in real life, you might not have that much time. But then, when Perdita is that age, you’ll know her better, so you won’t just be guessing what she might want or need. I don’t think you’re ready to bring up a child on your own, but you’re certainly ready for a few babysitting assignments.’

‘Why would parents let me babysit their children?’

‘Because they’ll know I’m coming with you, and I’m a qualified parenting instructor and can help you out if things get badly out of control,’ said Eski. ‘But as far as their children know, I’m just your pet. You’re the one who has to make them do their homework and go to bed on time.’


	17. Chapter 17

Eski seemed to know all the humans in the area – or at least, all the ones who had had children – and Gardas suspected that she had had a quiet word with some of them. At any rate, over the next few weeks, people seemed to be making the effort to treat him and Perdita as human. Gardas could recognise making the effort – he was working hard enough at learning to behave like a human. Instead of asking Beatrice how Gardas was, they remembered to ask Gardas how he was, and how Perdita was, and whether she had any teeth yet, and whether she was able to sit up by herself. Quite often, they even said, ‘Do you have any use for this? I love knitting, but my grandchildren have more jackets than they know what to do with,’ or, ‘Do you think Perdita would enjoy playing with these? My children loved them when they were her age.’ The schoolmistress gave them a wooden box with different-shaped holes and different blocks to drop through the holes, so that Perdita would know her shapes by the time she started school. When Beatrice and Gardas worked on making potions, Beatrice let Perdita have a small pan and a wooden spoon, so that she could play at making potions too, or just enjoy banging the wood against the metal. Gardas had started sewing a rag-dragon made of bits of old clothes, with her two sides, her tummy, her wings and her paws each made out of a different sort of cloth, and eyes embroidered in black wool. He hoped Perdita would like her. At the moment, Perdita’s favourite toy was a set of round wooden pegs which you could, if you were dextrous enough, hammer through holes with a wooden mallet. If you weren’t very good at hammering yet, you could chew them, float them in the bath, roll them on the floor, roll them out of reach and cry for them to be retrieved, or throw them at people.

This was all good. What was frustrating was that people now seemed to think he ought to have a social life. They had started asking things like, ‘Do you ever go out in the evenings? If Beatrice doesn’t mind taking care of your young one, you could always drop in at the Knight and Dragon – no offence – for a drink,’ or, ‘You know, my daughter and my niece both have babies the same age as your Perdita; maybe you should have tea with them sometime,’ or, ‘Are you any good at archery? Most of the men round here – and Xanthus, of course – get together to practise.’ 

Gardas managed to evade most of these with a mumble of, ‘Maybe when Perdita’s a bit older,’ but agreed to go to archery practice once, on the grounds that Xanthus would be there, that Beatrice considered he needed the exercise, that he had a duty to defend his adopted homeland by non-magical means if he could no longer serve as a wizard, and, most importantly, that practising hitting a target was something he could do without making conversation. When the morning’s practice was done, the other men – and Xanthus – went off to the Knight and Dragon for a drink, and Gardas walked home alone. After all, he told himself, it was bad enough being a were-dragon without becoming a drunkard as well. Xanthus pointed out (when he and Gardas were alone) that he didn’t drink either, because drunken centaurs had just as bad a tendency towards hooliganism, rape and murder, and that the landlord knew this and was perfectly willing to serve him tea or apple juice instead of ale or cider. Gardas decided not to go to archery practice again.

‘Why do people want me to go out and meet people?’ he asked Beatrice, when they were safely alone (Eski having gone out, probably in search of more people to pester on his behalf).

‘Well, I suppose because humans are a social species, like bees. We learn how to be human by how we are with each other.’

‘I’m your friend. And your servant.’

‘My assistant.’

‘And I’m Perdita’s father. Isn’t that enough?’

‘Maybe it is, for now. Just as it’s enough for Perdita that she’s your daughter. But when she’s a bit bigger, she’ll start to be interested in other children. By the time she’s two, she’ll probably be fighting with other children when they both want the same toy – but when she’s three, she’ll start to understand sharing and want to play with other children, not just alongside them.

‘And you – well, obviously, you’re not a baby, but it doesn’t seem to me as if you’ve had much chance to learn how to have a social life. When you were eleven, you were taken from everyone you knew – and even before that, you’d been manipulated into hurting the other children around you, to stop you from having any actual friends. From what I saw of Azalar, he didn’t give you the chance to make any friends at school – and then from the age of sixteen, he took you into his custody so that he could concentrate on making you his minion. So you’ve got a lot of catching up to do on learning how to make friends, just as you had to catch up on learning how to read when you were eleven. And if I can help you, I’m honoured to be allowed to, but that probably won’t mean you’ll want to be friends with only me for the rest of my life.’

‘And if you get married to Auric, you’ll want me out of the way,’ said Gardas.

‘If I get married to Auric, he’ll have to learn to get on with you,’ said Beatrice. ‘So will Paul. I’m certainly not going to throw you out of the house, or expect you to stay in your room and not bother us when we’re cuddling on the sofa. If we want to get intimate, we’ll go to our room, so that you and Paul don’t have to watch us.’

Gardas contemplated the prospect of being left behind in the living-room with the silently hostile, or sarcastically hostile, company of Paul. It still seemed better than being out in the cold. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

The next day, the first babysitting assignment turned up. Beatrice and Gardas (with Eski sitting demurely on the broom in cat-form) had been to see old Mrs Gummel, and check whether the healing potion they’d given her for her aching bones had been any less effective this week when she knew Gardas had brewed it, than last week when she had assumed that Beatrice had. Before they left, she said, ‘Oh, by the way, lad, would you mind dropping in to my daughter’s house next door, tomorrow evening? It’s her birthday, and her Nick’s taking her out to a dance – first proper night out she’s had since their Hazel was born. Hazel’s a lovely baby, good as gold – young Robbie’s a bit lively, but he’s a good lad at heart. Anyway, Nell can give you a list of everything they need – and I’m sure it’ll make their evening if you bring that lovely cat of yours along, won’t it, puss?’ Eski purred, happy to play along with the fiction that this was none of her doing.

The following afternoon, Gardas arrived as soon as Robbie was home from school, to allow plenty of time to get to know the children before he was left in sole charge of them. Nell served everyone sausages, mashed roots, and cabbage. Gardas tried to make himself useful by spoon-feeding Hazel her portion. Hazel concentrated on throwing bits of sausage at Eski, who ate them appreciatively. House-brownies seemed happy to eat meat and fish like the cats they pretended to be, and Gardas wondered why wild forest kobolds like Tallis seemed to prefer to be vegetarian. After all, they still had cat-like faces, and claws. Hazel continued to avoid being fed, but when Nell urged Gardas not to let his own dinner grow cold, he sat down to eat the vegetables first (after all, cold boiled vegetables were much less palatable than cold sausages) and Hazel fed herself by hand, massaging the remainder of the mash into her hair. Nell gave Gardas a quick run-down on routine – Hazel’s bedtime was at half past six, Robbie needed to do his recorder practice before this so as not to keep her awake once she was in her cot, but also needed to revise for tomorrow’s maths test, his bedtime was at eight and he could read himself a story by candlelight, but needed to snuff the candle out and go to sleep by half past eight, and now she must go up and change into her good dress, and she hadn’t even done the washing up, oh dear… Gardas assured her that he didn’t mind doing the washing up, and that he could listen to Robbie doing his recorder practice while Nick and Nell got ready.

Robbie did not want to do his recorder practice. While Gardas bathed Hazel, trying to loosen the mashed roots from her hair as gently as possible, Robbie stood beside the bathtub on the living-room floor, responding to Gardas’s repeated words, ‘Your mother says you have to do your recorder practice,’ with repeated objections: ‘I don’t want to! It’s a stupid song: “Go and tell Aunt Nancy the old grey goose is dead.” I don’t have to do it if I don’t want to. What are you going to do if I don’t? You can’t hit me, or no-one will let you babysit ever again, and then you can’t get your parenting licence. Anyway, it’ll be after half-past six in a minute, and then I can’t do it, ‘cos of not keeping Hazel awake. I’m going out to play now.’ And he ran out of the cottage, into the nearby woods.

Gardas wondered whether to chase after him – after all, it was nearly dark, and the patch of woodland beside the cottage was full of steep ravines that anyone could fall down in the dark. He decided not to worry until he had finished settling Hazel. After all, the boy had lived next to these woods all his life and must know every rock and every tree-root. Besides, it was cold and raining, and he would be sure to be back in once he had made his point.

A few minutes later came a terrified cry of ‘HELP!’ Gardas considered his options. It sounded much too urgent for him to have time to dry Hazel, dress her and put her to bed before looking for her brother. He couldn’t leave her in the bath unattended – it wasn’t even a little basin like the one he washed Perdita in at home, but big enough for her to roll over and drown. Yes, she was old enough to sit up on her own, but not too old to decide to see whether she could breathe underwater, and find out too late that she couldn’t. Even with the fire lit, it was too cold to take her out of the warm water and let her crawl around naked on the floor – not to mention the risk that she would crawl into the fire, or try to eat pins, or put her fingers in a mouse-trap. He wasn’t supposed to ask Eski for help, but this was an emergency, after all. 

‘Eski, watch the baby,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’ He hurried out into the night, locating Robbie by the sound of his wailing. The boy had not, in fact, gone very far. He had tried to climb up a steep rock-face from the valley path that wound through the woods, and had realised that he was afraid to climb any further, but, in the dim light and the shadows from the trees, didn’t dare climb back down either.

‘All right, lad,’ said Gardas. ‘I’m here – just below you. You can see to climb down onto my shoulders, can’t you? Right foot down – foothold just below you – to your left a bit…’

Robbie slipped, and Gardas managed to catch him just in time. Robbie was panting with shock, clinging to his rescuer like a much younger child, and insisted that Gardas carry him home on his shoulders. As the firelit windows of the cottage grew closer, he perked up. ‘Where’s Hazel?’ he asked. ‘You didn’t leave her in her cot on her own, did you? You’re not allowed to do that.’

‘In the bath,’ said Gardas.

‘You left her in the bath on her own? You’re going to get in so much trouble. Eski’s never going to let you get your licence!’ Robbie sounded gleeful now.

‘You know what Eski is?’

‘Yeah, but I’m not supposed to, am I? You’re the babysitter, you’re supposed to be in charge. She’s supposed to be just a stray cat who hangs around with babysitters and sees whether do things they’re not allowed to – and you’re definitely not allowed to leave a baby in a bath with just a cat to watch her!’

Gardas knew now what Robbie’s voice reminded him of. It was the way Azalar had taunted him when they were boys. It was a high-pitched version of the way Lankin used to say to him, ‘You’re an evil little beast, aren’t you?’ It was nothing like Paul’s honest anger and resentment of him now. This was someone who just delighted in getting people in trouble.

‘ _How dare you?_ ’ he roared, and spat a jet of flame. The boy slipped from Gardas’s scaly back and ran into the house without even stopping to complain of being hurt – though Gardas could see he was limping. Injured prey was easy to catch – no, the prey was inside, now. If he set fire to the house he could cook the prey…

‘ _Gardas! Behave yourself!_ ’ called Eski. ‘ _Lie down! Stay!_ ’ He lay down. He could hear her speaking in Westron now: ‘All right, Robbie, let’s have a look at that ankle – no, it’s not broken, just twisted. You sit there and rest while I put your sister in her cot, then I’ll come and bandage it. _No, Gardas, stay out there._ Yes, you do still need to do your homework – no, you can’t miss school tomorrow just because you’ve hurt your ankle. _No growling, Gardas._ But when you’ve done your homework, you’re going to bed at once. Well, because you need to rest your hurt ankle as much as possible. What will I do if you don’t? Well, that’s a good question. I’M not studying for a parenting licence, so there’s nothing to stop ME smacking you – and I’ve got claws, remember. Oh, that doesn’t scare you? Well, Gardas is out there – and, as you’ve just ever-so-kindly pointed out to him, he probably won’t get his parenting licence now. So, considering he’s in dragon-form and not thinking very clearly, he might feel he’s got nothing to lose by eating a cheeky little boy. _I don’t mean that, Gardas. I know you wouldn’t do that. But Robbie doesn’t, does he?_ You don’t think I’d throw you out? Well, you could be right. But if you do your homework and go to bed, you won’t have to find out, will you? _No starting fires, Gardas. I know you’re cold and wet, and it’s your own fault. Just lie down and wait. I’ll take you home when the parents get home._ ’

Gardas waited. And waited. Rain always makes dragons miserable, apart from the aquatic Blues, but this was worse. He could think a bit more clearly, as long as Eski was talking to him. Once the children were in bed, she left the door open so that she could talk and sing to him from the doorway, not leaving either him or them exactly unsupervised. He was a bad dragon, he knew that. He couldn’t get a parenting licence. Probably they’d have to take Perdita away from him, and him away from Beatrice, and lock him up somewhere. If they put him in a stone dungeon, could he burn his way through the stone? Maybe.

When the grown-up humans at last came back, Eski greeted them with, ‘Hi, had a good evening? Ours has been a bit of an adventure. Robbie was playing in the woods and got into difficulties and screamed for help, so Gardas came and rescued him, but on the way back he had a slight magical accident and went into dragon-form, and Robbie slipped off his back and twisted his ankle. There’s nothing seriously wrong, but I’ve bandaged it just in case. I’ve had to take over keeping an eye on the children, as Gardas is a bit big to fit inside your cottage just now.’

‘I see,’ said the female human – Nell, she’s a person called Nell, remember! ‘Would he like a hot drink or anything, do you think?’

Gardas shook his head.

‘I think he’d just like to go home and be turned human again,’ said Eski. ‘ _Come on, Gardas, let me up, we’re going home now._ ’

Gardas waited until the brownie was securely seated between his back-spines, and then he soared into the air. Even when it was cold and wet, and even when he knew that he was a bad dragon and he was in disgrace, it felt as wonderful as ever to beat the air under his wings so that the hills and valleys dropped away below him. He wanted to dive-bomb flocks of sheep or geese, or gobble bats on the wing, or snort fire at the patches of woodland, but Eski kept coaxing him, ‘ _No, straight on – be good, Gardas – here we are. Here’s home. Down here, Gardas. Look, here’s Beatrice!_ ’

Gardas landed, and watched as his owner – no, his friend Beatrice – came out to meet him. He hung his head, embarrassed at letting her see him like this again. Beatrice patted his scaly neck. ‘Want to be human?’ she asked. Gardas nodded, and she kissed him on the snout. Gardas realised that being naked in front of Beatrice was nearly as bad as being a dragon – not to mention the cold rain being even more uncomfortable on human skin. At least when it had happened before, he had been already undressed and in bed.

‘Come on in, and I’ll find you a towel,’ said Beatrice briskly. ‘Are you very cold?’

‘N-not bad.’

‘You could do with a hot drink, and soaking your feet in some hot water, at the least,’ said Beatrice. She made him sit by the fire until his teeth had stopped chattering and he had changed into his nightshirt, before asking, ‘Do you want to talk about what happened?’

‘Not now. Maybe tomorrow.’

‘Would you like a story, or just your calming potion and bed?’

Gardas considered. ‘Could you read me How to Train Your Demon?’

‘Yes, of course. The first one, or one of the sequels?’

‘The first one, please.’

Beatrice didn’t bother saying things like, ‘You already know that story,’ or, ‘But the book’s been lying on your bedside table since you got here; you could have read it any time.’ She fetched the book, and read Gardas the opening chapter, about the naïve teenage boy who accidentally befriends a wise old demon who has lived with many humans before him, but none who had ever thought of her as a person and bothered to give her a name. Gardas listened to the familiar story until he began to grow drowsy. As he stumbled up to bed, he wondered whether being a were-dragon was more like being a demonologist who has a demon and needs to keep it under control, or like being a demon who has lived with humans long enough to be able to behave almost like one, but is still a wild creature who needs to be able, from time to time, to go out and hunt.


	18. Chapter 18

After his one attempt at baby-sitting, Gardas felt more wretched than he had ever been in his life – even more than in all the years of serving Azalar. Then, a faint rational part of his mind trying to make itself heard had insisted that he needed to defeat Azalar and escape, while a much more powerful part had been looking forward to the next time Azalar would let him out to go and set fire to farms and villages. Now, he knew that killing Azalar hadn’t done any good, because he could never kill his own monstrousness. He would certainly never be fit to bring Perdita up. If that boy hadn’t managed to get away in time, or if Eski hadn’t been there to keep things under control, Gardas might all too easily have eaten him. He wasn’t fit to be around humans.

Given the choice, he would have preferred to lie on his bed, not eating or drinking, and waiting to die. Beatrice, after trying to coax him to eat, tried reminding him that he was on probation under her supervision, and that she could give him a direct order to eat. Gardas ignored her. After all, if he broke the terms of their agreement, he could only be either imprisoned or killed, and, considering that he was a dangerous monster, these looked like the best options. Beatrice reminded him of the HALT acronym – don’t get Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired, or it just becomes too easy to relapse. Gardas forced himself to eat a little, as long as it was only plain water and stale bread.

He couldn’t sleep at nights, even with the aid of a calming potion. Usually he gave up trying to sleep by around midnight, and got up to try to find anything to occupy his time: baking bread (just because _he_ had decided to live on yesterday’s leftover stale bread was no reason why Beatrice shouldn’t have a fresh, still-warm, crusty loaf ready at breakfast); peeling and chopping vegetables for meals he had no intention of partaking in; scouring cauldrons and preparing any potion-making ingredients, and perhaps making up a batch of any potion that Beatrice had mentioned that they needed; or if all else failed, just sweeping the house and polishing things. By pre-dawn, it could be time to milk the goats and let them out, feed the chickens and let them out, so that once it was actually light, he could be ready to muck the goatsheds and the hen-house out, fetch water from the well, and then chop firewood until, by lunchtime, he had exhausted himself enough to stagger up to his room and fall asleep for a couple of hours.

Of course, he could just as easily have lit a candle and read a chapter or two of _How to Train Your Demon_ until the effort of reading made him feel drowsy. But he might have enjoyed that, and he didn’t deserve to enjoy anything.

Gardas hoped Beatrice didn’t mind too much that he had completely abandoned to her the responsibility of looking after Perdita. After all, since he was never going to get a parenting licence, Perdita would have to go to adoptive parents soon anyway, and in the meantime, he needed to get the child used to not having him around. Perdita, who was used to Beatrice as well as Gardas, didn’t complain. Sometimes she asked for ‘da-da’, which might have meant, ‘Daddy,’ but, after all, ‘da’ just as frequently meant, ‘dog’, ‘duck’, ‘dragon’ (usually the small Gules dragons they saw all over the place), or just, ‘that thing over there’. At any rate, Beatrice would explain patiently, ‘No, Daddy doesn’t want to play at the moment; he’s not feeling very well. He might want to give you a cuddle – oh, maybe not. Well, we can sit near him and he can listen while I give you a cuddle and sing to you, can’t he?’

Eski came to apologise. ‘I was a grumpy furball the other night – don’t take what I said to heart, will you? Robbie? He’s fine – he wasn’t badly hurt, he was just making a fuss. No, he wasn’t scared by what I said – he’s a cheeky little brat and he knew I wouldn’t really hurt him or let you hurt him. But I shouldn’t have used you as a threat like that – it wasn’t fair to you.’

‘It was,’ Gardas muttered. ‘All I’m fit for.’

Beatrice came with Gardas to his next appointment with Xanthus – much to his relief, as he wouldn’t have trusted himself to leave the house unattended. Eski stayed behind to watch Perdita while they were gone. Gardas could barely bring himself to speak, but managed to point to the bottle of truth potion. Xanthus poured him a dose, and Gardas drank it, and poured out the story of what had happened. At the end, Xanthus asked, ‘So, what are you going to do now?’

‘There’s nothing I can do, is there? They ought to kill me now and save time.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I keep turning into a bloodthirsty monster, and I always will. You can’t do anything to stop that, can you?’

‘I can’t stop you turning into a dragon,’ said Xanthus. ‘But maybe you can avoid letting the dragon be a monster.’

‘How? I’m not even a proper were-dragon any more – I can’t control myself, when I’m a dragon.’

‘According to what you’ve told me, you’ve turned into a dragon twice in the time you’ve been here,’ Xanthus pointed out. ‘The first time, you didn’t hurt anyone, just burned a bit of a hole in the roof. Is that right?’

‘Yes. It didn’t burn through the thatch, because Beatrice put it out in time.’

‘And the second time, you were a dragon for several hours. In that time, you frightened a child, who slipped from your back and twisted his ankle, but you didn’t do him serious harm, did you?’

‘No, but I could have done. I hated him, and it wasn’t fair, he wasn’t really evil, he was just a boy who’d been naughty, running off into the night, and he’d had a fright, nearly falling off a rock, so he was trying to make himself feel better by telling me off. I know that now.’

‘Did you then?’

‘No. I thought he was trying to mess with my mind the way Lankin and Azalar did, trying to make me evil by telling me that everything I did was wrong, and he’d only do that if he was evil himself.’

‘So you felt that he was confusing you, because you’d done the most safe, decent, sensible thing you could think of, in asking Eski to look after Robbie’s baby sister while you went out to find Robbie? You felt he was sabotaging your efforts to do the right thing, by making you feel that whatever you did was wrong?’

‘Yes. But I shouldn’t have lost it like that. I could have just accepted that he was right and I’m bad. Beatrice wouldn’t have gone berserk.’

‘No, but she wouldn’t have assumed he was right,’ Xanthus pointed out. ‘Most fairly sane, well-balanced people have enough sense of whether they’re doing the right thing or not to know when to take criticism seriously, and when just to ignore it because it doesn’t matter. You’ve suffered so much abuse that you’re not ready to do that yet.’

‘So I’m not fit to be a parent.’

‘You’re not mature enough to be ready yet, maybe,’ said Xanthus. ‘Dragons mature much more slowly than humans, after all. From a dragon’s point of view, you wouldn’t be an adult, ready to hold positions of authority or to find your mate or decide whether to have children, until you’re at least two hundred.’

‘But I am Perdita’s father! And Paul’s.’

‘Paul’s, certainly,’ said Xanthus. ‘Do you actually know that you’re Perdita’s father, or did you just assume you must be?’

‘She’s a were-dragon! Who else’s could she be?’

‘Any two people with were-dragon ancestry,’ said Xanthus. ‘It’s hard to tell when a were-dragon will be born – it’s not a straightforward thing where two were-dragons have were-dragon children, and two humans each with one were-dragon parent have a one in four chance of having a were-dragon child. The truth is, lots of humans have were-dragon ancestry, but there are lots of other factors to do with what they’ve been eating or drinking, or what illnesses they’ve had – not to mention what spells they’ve been exposed to – that determine whether their child will be a were-dragon, and if so, what variety.’

‘But were-dragons must be more likely to have were-dragon children, mustn’t they?’

‘If they risked having children at all, they probably would,’ Gardas agreed. ‘But even in a marriage between two were-dragons, there’s still quite a high chance that their children might be human, and would die of old age within a century. So that’s why most were-dragon couples avoid having children at all, because they can’t bear to face the grief of losing them so young.’

‘That’s stupid! A human life isn’t short, it’s just – normal for a human life! It doesn’t mean it’s not worth living! Only,’ Gardas admitted, ‘I always assumed I’d die first and Paul wouldn’t come to my funeral, but maybe later on, when he’s an old man himself, he might forgive me for everything I did to him, and then he might come and put some flowers on my grave, if they can still find it by then. How’s he supposed to forgive me while I’m still alive?’

‘Maybe because you go on forgiving him for being so unfriendly, and showing him that you’re not the monster you used to be?’ suggested Xanthus. ‘I’m not saying he will, but he might. And I know I said a human life is short compared to a were-dragon’s, but he could still have sixty, seventy, eighty years ahead of him, barring accidents. And by then, you’d be a hundred, and you’d probably have found ways to manage your problems from the damage you’ve suffered, just as Paul has found ways to cope with having only one arm.’

‘Knotted bootlaces,’ said Gardas. Paul, having decided it was beneath his dignity to ask an adult to tie his laces in a bow, but still couldn’t manage to do this one-handed, compromised by tying them in a reef knot, and then tucking the trailing ends into the top of his socks.

‘But when he really wants to look smart, he doesn’t mind asking someone to tie them for him,’ said Xanthus. ‘Any more than I mind asking you to check my hooves for stones. It’s a matter of striking the balance between what you can do for yourself, and what to ask for help with. After all – why do you think it was that you didn’t harm anyone, the last two times you went into dragon form?’

‘Because there was someone who could keep me under control,’ said Gardas. ‘Beatrice the first time, and Eski the second.’

‘Well, there you are, then,’ said Xanthus. ‘Maybe, instead of trying to stop yourself shape-shifting at all, so that it bursts out unexpectedly when you lose your temper, you ought to ask Beatrice to turn you into one every so often, so that she and your dragon-self can work on obedience training. There’s no reason you can’t go flying, as long as you’ve got a rider who can keep you under control.’

‘Like a dog that has to be kept on a lead,’ said Gardas.

‘Well, isn’t being exercised on a lead is still better than being locked in a kennel the whole time?’ suggested Xanthus. ‘And it might not have to be forever – you might learn to control yourself, once your human self has got used to your dragon-self.’

‘Beatrice can train anything,’ said Gardas. ‘She even trained her goats to take themselves out for walks to eat the brambles, without eating people’s gardens.’ Beatrice, who had been keeping quiet throughout this conversation, as patients on truth potion were easily distracted, just gave a modest shrug at this, but she was smiling.

‘Have you given your dragon-self a name?’ Xanthus asked.

‘What?’ Gardas wondered why anyone would ask that. Then he remembered that when he had first encountered Perdita, he had wondered whether to name her dragon-self, and decided it was better to let her choose the name when she was older. It had never occurred to him to think of a name for the terrifying black dragon he became. Perdita looked as if she would be a beautiful Grey dragon who would deserve a name. ‘Do you have a name for your horse half?’ he asked.

Xanthus gave an embarrassed smile. ‘Dobbin,’ he admitted eventually.

‘Seriously?’

‘Yes. It’s more of a – private thing when I’m alone, telling myself, “Dobbin, you’re getting restless cooped up in here – better go for a nice brisk canter and get it out of your system,” or, “Dobbin, after the amount of oats you’ve had, is it any wonder you’re too excited to stand still?” I tend not to introduce myself to people as Xanthus-Dobbin. They might think I was a bit strange.’

For a moment, Gardas wondered whether it was all right to laugh at the implication that, without a double-barrelled name, there was nothing the least bit strange about a mind-healer who was a centaur and who frequently began sessions by asking his patient to curry-comb him. Just in time, he realised that Xanthus’s eyes were twinkling. The three people laughed together. Then Gardas grew serious again. ‘I’ll never be a proper were-dragon, though, will I?’ he said. ‘People will always be worrying about me.’

‘Of course they will,’ said Xanthus. ‘Don’t you worry about the people you love?’

‘Yes.’ Especially about Perdita, and – no matter how seldom they saw each other now, and how hostile the boy was when they did meet – about Paul.

‘So why shouldn’t they worry about you?’

Gardas nodded, acknowledging the point. ‘If I can’t get a parenting licence, or I’m not Perdita’s father, what happens to her?’ he asked.

‘Well, I’m happy to adopt her, and it’s still going to help her to have an older were-dragon around, as she grows up,’ said Beatrice.

‘But if I’m not her father, what am I?’

‘For the moment, you’re a grown-up whom she knows and trusts, and who loves her,’ said Beatrice. ‘I can’t see what difference it makes just yet, except that we might need to encourage her to call you “Gardas” instead of “Daddy”. And that’s only if she isn’t your daughter. Do you trust Auric to set up the experiment to find out whether she is or not? That’s more wizard-magic than witch-magic.’

‘But witches in old stories usually know who a child’s real father is,’ Gardas protested, thinking of a story Beatrice had told him about a murdered king, a usurper, and two possible heirs, with the twist at the end that, probably, neither of the boys was really the biological son of the original king.

‘Yes, but that’s mainly to do with being midwives and talking to the mothers,’ Beatrice pointed out. ‘Even in the story, the witches weren’t sure the man they’d claimed was the rightful heir wasn’t actually the king’s son, were they? They just didn’t think it mattered, as long as he was a trustworthy man who’d make a good ruler.’

‘And it needn’t matter with Perdita yet,’ added Xanthus. ‘At the moment, you’re just an older were-dragon who cares about her. When she’s older – late teens, maybe – the relationship between you will change from adult/child to damaged were-dragon/whole were-dragon, and whether the two of you manage to go on being friends after that depends on both of you. But it won’t be for a couple of centuries that you have to settle the question of whether you’re her soul-mate.’

Gardas spluttered with shock. ‘I’m old enough to be her father!’ he managed at last.

‘And you think that’ll bother her when she’s two hundred, and you’re two hundred and thirty? I’m not saying the two of you will be soul-mates – by then, you’ll have had time to find other were-dragons, so that you’ll each have a much wider choice. I’m just saying: the relationship the two of you have now isn’t the only kind of relationship there can ever be between you.’

‘Find other were-dragons? So we have to leave this place?’

‘You don’t “have to” do anything,’ said Beatrice. ‘Both of you are quite welcome to go on living with me as long as you want – for the rest of my life, if you wish. It’s just that later on, when Perdita is grown up by human standards, it’ll be time for her to start growing up into being a were-dragon. In that case, she’ll probably want to meet other were-dragons, and you might want to as well, in which case you might decide to search together. You might settle in this area and keep in touch with your were-dragon friends, or you might settle somewhere else, but keep coming back on visits for centuries, to see how Paul and his descendants are getting on. But you don’t need to worry about that until you start wanting to leave; do you believe me?’

Gardas looked questioningly at Xanthus. ‘But am I supposed to want to be with my own kind?’

‘Humans are part of your own kind, and mine,’ said Xanthus. ‘At the moment, you’re still learning to be a person, and if imprinting on Beatrice helps you with that, and she doesn’t have any objection, then you’re in the right place.’

Gardas looked from the human to the centaur and back. They really meant it. They really weren’t trying to get rid of him. ‘Thank you,’ he said at last.

As he and Beatrice walked home, he tried to think of a good name for his dragon-self. Goralin? Illaac? Komiantanth? Goulong? They were nice names, but none of them seemed quite right. Still, at least they were better than ‘Dobbin’.


	19. Chapter 19

‘Do you still believe in the gods?’ Gardas asked.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Beatrice. ‘Why do you ask?’

It was evening, two days after the conversation with Xanthus, and life had started to return to normal. Gardas had returned to caring for and playing with Perdita, and (other than getting up to deal with Perdita) trying to sleep through nights, and coming out with Beatrice on visits.

‘You never talk about the gods any more. You used to, all the time.’

‘Well, my talking about them didn’t do you any good, did it?’ Beatrice pointed out. ‘Besides – I was young enough then to think I understood what God was like. Now I know that a human mind – or a were-dragon mind, or even a troll or centaur mind – can’t possibly hold the fullness of who God is, and that it doesn’t matter, as long as God understands us.’

‘You used to pray out loud. Before every meal, and when you got up and when you went to bed, the girls in your dormitory said.’

‘I suppose I did,’ said Beatrice.

‘Why don’t you do that now?’

Beatrice considered. ‘Well, I suppose – at that age, I thought that there were religious activities, and then there was everything else, and religion had to come first. And as I grew up, I started to realise that God is everywhere, in everything: in the trees and the rocks, the snails and the earthworms, the rain and the rainbows, the sun and the sunrises and sunsets and the stars at night and the dappling of the sky before sunrise.’

‘Like that story about the vampires?’ Gardas asked. ‘The father vampire tried to get his children used to holy symbols, so that they could see them without crumbling to dust, and it didn’t work because it just meant that it just meant that everywhere they looked, they saw some shape, some cross or star or crescent, that was holy in some religion or other, and they couldn’t be at peace anywhere. And the priest in the story had been struggling in his faith before, but after the vampires bit him, it meant that everywhere he looked, he saw holiness.’

‘Exactly,’ said Beatrice. ‘The moon and the stars, wheels and candlesticks, fish and doves and lambs, daisies and clover and holly and oak, and even things as basic as bread. And when you realise that it isn’t that _this_ oak tree is actually a god disguised as a tree and it would be sacrilegious to climb him, or that _this_ bread is sacred bread for a festival and only the priest may eat it, but that God is everywhere, in all trees and all bread, then everything becomes a prayer.’

‘Or everything is sacrilege,’ Gardas pointed out. ‘Like the story of that hunter who accidentally saw a goddess having a bath in a river, so she turned him into a deer and had his hounds eat him. Or the holy temple where no-one was allowed in except one priest once a year after he’d had lots of purification rituals done, and he had to have a rope tied round his ankle in case he made a mistake in his worship and was struck dead, because the temple was the place where God was. If God is everywhere, and we’re not allowed to look at God or be where God is, we’re not allowed to be _anywhere_ or look at _anything!_ ’

‘And since we’re not struck dead, God evidently doesn’t mind our being where She is,’ Beatrice concluded. ‘Just because there are many stories people have told to try to explain their experience of God doesn’t mean that all the stories are right in every detail.’

‘But if we can’t understand God, we can’t know that the gods don’t do things like that,’ Gardas pointed out. ‘All those stories of gods raping women and getting them pregnant, or telling people to kill anyone who worships a different god, or kill their own children, could all be true, couldn’t they?’

‘Well, they could, but I don’t think it’s very likely.’

‘But how do you know? Have you ever seen a god – not just God-in-everything, but an actual manifestation? Or have you ever heard a god speak to you? Like the bit in _How to Train Your Demon_ where they’d sent a holy man to kill the demon, and the hero prays for the demon to be spared, because she hasn’t really done anything wrong, and his god answers the prayer?’

‘Sometimes. Not exactly like that, but God does talk to me out loud occasionally. When there’s something She really needs me to know, that I wouldn’t have worked out on my own.’

‘What sort of things does She say?’

‘Well, the last time was telling me to invite you to come and live here.’

‘Oh.’ Gardas wasn’t sure what to say to that. After thinking it over for a few more minutes, he said: ‘So you didn’t want me here?’

‘Of course I did! You were a good friend, until Azalar tricked you into drinking that love potion, and you’d been through a horrible time since I saw you last. I’m honoured if I can do anything to help you sort your life out. It’s just that – well, without a prompting from the god, I might not have been sure whether to concentrate on helping you or Paul, and I’d have felt guilty whichever decision I made. This way – I can trust that it will work out.’

‘In stories, if a god tells a holy man to do something, it’s usually something like telling an evil king to stop oppressing the people. It has to be something you don’t want to do. And usually the holy man argues about it, and runs away, and only eventually does what the god tells him to.’

‘I suppose those are the stories that are told, because they’re more dramatic,’ said Beatrice. ‘It doesn’t mean that the _only_ actions that please the gods are the ones we don’t want to do, or that everything we enjoy doing is wrong.’

‘Most things I enjoy _are_ wrong,’ Gardas protested, but then he thought about it. ‘No. I just hadn’t found many things I enjoyed at all, as a human, and most of the things I enjoy as a dragon are wrong. I didn’t know I was allowed to be happy, before I came here.’

‘But you knew you wouldn’t want people you loved to be unhappy?’

‘Of course I wouldn’t!’

‘Then why would God want that for us?’

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Gardas said: ‘So – your whole life is a prayer, but you don’t pray out loud. I suppose it’s like learning to read. You start learning by reading out loud, but when you’re good at it, you can read in your head.’

‘Sort of, yes.’

‘Only – if you can’t read, then if people won’t read to you out loud, you don’t learn how to read,’ Gardas pointed out. ‘You can look at a book and pretend you’re reading, but you don’t know if you really are reading or not, if you don’t know what reading is anyway. And even when you can read by yourself, it’s still good to listen to a story read out loud.’

‘So – would you like me to pray for you, or with you? Out loud?’

‘Yes. Please. If you don’t mind.’

‘I don’t mind, it’s just – such a long time since I’ve done that.’

‘Will you do it now? Please?’

Beatrice nodded. For a few minutes she was quiet, sitting beside Gardas and holding his hand. At last, she said, ‘God beyond our understanding, thank you for Gardas. Thank you for his warm, loving heart, and for his determination to be the best person he can be to look after Perdita, whether or not he is her father, and whether or not he can be her legal guardian. Thank you for his unflinching honesty in facing up to the things he’s done wrong, and for his willingness to learn and develop and rethink the things he has believed in the past. I pray that you will help him to be aware of his good qualities as well as his flaws, and I pray that you will help him to realise how much you love him, not even because of his good qualities, but simply because you love every creature you have made. I pray that when Paul and Auric come here, you will help the five of us to learn to live together in peace. I thank you that, as a were-dragon, Gardas might have such a long life ahead of him, and I ask that he may find what his life is for, and live it to the full. Amen.’

‘Amen,’ Gardas echoed. He needed to think things through for a bit longer, before adding, ‘Some people say just breathing is a prayer, don’t they? Being conscious of your breathing. It’s supposed to calm you down.’

‘Yes.’

‘But when I feel bad, if I think about my breathing, I just think that I _shouldn’t_ be breathing, because I shouldn’t be alive because I’m evil, and I might turn any minute into a monster breathing fire.’

‘Yes,’ said Beatrice. ‘Being aware of your breathing can be relaxing, but only if you already believe that God breathed life into you because She wanted you to have life. It’s just that most people already believe that their being alive is a good thing, and that being relaxed and at peace is a good thing. So they forget that there are people who don’t know that.’

‘In _How to Train Your Demon_ , the demon is frightened of gods because they’re the only beings who can kill chaos demons, isn’t she?’ said Gardas. ‘And – she never quite notices that all the times she’s met gods, they _haven’t_ hurt her, and just because they _could_ doesn’t mean that they _want_ to, if she’s not doing any harm.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I feel like a chaos demon, sometimes. And – I said I didn’t believe in the gods, but mainly I just didn’t want them to exist, because I thought if they did, they’d be like Lankin only worse. The day we met you, we watched a baby being blessed by a temple dragon…’ he broke off, remembering that of course Beatrice had been there just behind them and had seen what they were watching. But Beatrice just nodded encouragingly. ‘I thought the dragon was going to eat the baby. I thought that was what all religion was about, killing children. But it isn’t, is it?’

‘No.’

‘So, are you going to take Perdita to be blessed at the temple?’

‘If you’re all right with that. It’s usually a sort of welcoming ritual – to welcome a newly-born child, or a newly-adopted child, into the family.’

‘Can I be, as well? Or are only children allowed?’

‘I can’t see why not. But do you really want me to adopt you?’

‘I think you already have.’

‘I suppose I have,’ said Beatrice. ‘Come to think of it, there are extra verses of the blessing song for different species. As were-dragons, you’d probably get the human verse and the dragon verse. I’m not sure of the Black dragon version, but the Grey dragon version goes:

_May the ground drop beneath you;_

_May the wind be in your wings;_

_May the moon shine brightly on your scales;_

_May your breath bring healing, never death;_

_And, as long as you shall live,_

_May your heart be open to the love of God._ ’

Gardas wondered what kind of blessing there could be for a dragon who needed to hunt forest creatures, not live on moonlight, and whose breath could only bring fiery death and a blight on the land. But after all, if the gods had blessed him by letting him be friends with Beatrice, it would be positively greedy to ask for anything more.


	20. Chapter 20

Auric came over a few days later to carry out the paternity test, and, as Paul had a couple of days off school, Auric brought him, too. The idea was that Beatrice would brew a potion and pour out two vials of it, and Auric would put a hair from Gardas into one and a hair from Perdita into the other and cast a charm on them which would mean that, by the following day, Auric would be able to determine whether the two were-dragons were father and daughter. It also meant, Beatrice had warned him in advance, that she and Auric were going to need time for technical discussion and improving their knowledge of the differences between witch-magic and wizard-magic, so it would be helpful if he could keep Paul company. Gardas fully understood that this translated as both, ‘Give me some time to chat with my boyfriend,’ and, ‘Learn how to get on with the child you know is yours!’ But knowing didn’t make it any easier.

‘Want to play with Perdita?’ he asked. They were sitting at the far end of the living room, and keeping their voices down, though Beatrice and Gardas were so absorbed in their own conversation that they probably wouldn’t have overheard much anyway.

‘I’m not a baby!’ Paul snapped.

‘I know. She likes playing with grown-ups.’

‘I’m not a grown-up, either.’

In truth, Perdita was currently happily occupied in playing with the shape-sorting box on her own. Gardas had to admit that, just because he personally felt that Perdita was one of the most fascinating people in the world and that it was an honour to be allowed to play with her was no reason why Paul should feel the same way. Time for another topic of conversation.

‘Have you read How to Train Your Demon?’

Paul groaned. ‘Ugh, not that one! We’re being made to read it in school! It’s so boring!’

Reading stories had not been part of the curriculum at the wizarding school, but Gardas was familiar with the magic that automatically transformed any book you had to read in school, however full of adventures in which the hero thwarted kidnappers, solved murders, rescued captives and sank pirate ships, into a boring book which you really, really didn’t want to read.

‘What other lessons do you have, at your new school?’

‘Just normal lessons – normal for commoners like me,’ Paul added bitterly. ‘Maths and Kernese and Natural Philosophy and Religious Studies and History and Geography and Music and Art and Woodwork and PE and stuff like that. Oh, and they have Magic, for those who have the aptitude, but of course I’m excused that. The same way I’m excused in PE when they do archery, so I have to go for a run instead. And I’m excused learning to play a musical instrument – you need two hands to play the recorder, even! All I get to do is sing.’

Gardas felt as though his head was being crushed between a giant set of nutcrackers, but he couldn’t find an adequate way to respond. ‘I’m sorry,’ probably wouldn’t have cut it. He settled for: ‘Made any friends?’

‘Yeah, of course!’ sighed Paul. ‘People who’ve been at this school for two years already, and were friends at primary school before that, are just going to queue up to be friends with a refugee ex-wizard with a crippled arm, who turns up in the third year not knowing how to do any of the lessons because they’re all different from home! That was sarcasm, if you hadn’t realised,’ he added. ‘No, I don’t have any friends. Some of the girls tried being nicey-nicey to me at first because I’m a poor ickle cripple, but I just ignored them until they stopped.’

‘Don’t knock niceness,’ said Gardas. ‘I was in fifth year before a girl tried being nice to me.’

‘Whatever,’ said Paul. ‘So, no, I don’t have any friends. I can’t be friends with the wizard kids, because I’m not a wizard any more, and I can’t be friends with the commoners, because they don’t know what it’s like to have been a wizard. There’s no-one like me there.’

Beatrice would have handled this conversation much better, if she hadn’t been busy with Auric. Beatrice would have asked intelligent questions, like, ‘So, do wizard children not mix with commoners, even when they’re at the same school?’

Come to think of it, Gardas realised, if he was capable of thinking that Beatrice would have asked that, he was capable of asking it. ‘Don’t the wizards mix with commoners?’

‘Well, duh, of course they do!’ snapped Paul. ‘It’s not like at home, with the wizards in the Walled City and everyone else outside. Anyway, loads of the wizards are cra– uh, useless at lessons other than magic, so they need friends they can ask for help with homework. Not all of them, though,’ he admitted. ‘There’s a girl in my class who’s a wizard and giving a solo violin recital at the school concert and on the cricket team and wins prizes for swimming and archery, and she’s supposed to be tutoring me to help me catch up with maths, because the teacher says I’m ‘a little behind’, because we don’t do maths at proper wizarding schools! Well, okay, they offered Numerology, but only weirdos took it. And she’s one of the girls who used to try to be nice to me, as well.’

‘What’s her name?’ Gardas asked.

‘Mary Sue. I think I might [write a song about her](https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=peggy+sue+buddy+holly+youtube&view=detail&mid=F0D6927FB47CA8221430F0D6927FB47CA8221430&FORM=VIRE0&ru=%2fsearch%3fpc%3dCOSP%26ptag%3dN1117D060818AE20BDC3E2E%26form%3dCONMHP%26conlogo%3dCT3210127%26q%3dpeggy%2bsue%2bbuddy%2bholly%2byoutube): I hate you, Mary Sue, I would like to strangle you, or stew you, in a Da-ark Arts brew-ew-ew _…_ Sorry,’ Paul interrupted himself, realising that the reference to Dark Arts potions had not been tactful.

‘Maybe she likes you,’ Gardas suggested.

‘No way! She just feels sorry for me.’

‘Maybe she’s sorry you got hurt because she likes you. Some girls are like that.’

‘Oh, right! I see it now: you destroyed my magic and burnt my arm so that I’d attract the sort of girls who feel sorry for losers. You had my best interests at heart all along! Well, sorry, but I’m not you, and I want more from life than being some witch’s familiar!’

‘Yes, but I’m Beatrice’s familiar,’ said Gardas. He wasn’t sure how anyone could want more from life than that. Then he remembered something very important he needed to add. ‘Anyway, this girl – if she offers you a drink and it smells of honey, don’t drink it.’

‘Well, duh!’ said Paul. ‘How stupid do you think I am, exactly?’

At this point they were interrupted by Beatrice coming to claim a hair each from Gardas (which he plucked out without hesitation) and Perdita (who screamed indignantly, but calmed down as Gardas reassured her).

‘We need to leave the potion to sit with the hairs in it, so we might as well have some lunch,’ Beatrice said. ‘How about going out to the Knight and Dragon?’

Apart from the inn which they had stayed in just after his trial, Gardas didn’t have much experience of taverns, alehouses and the like, but he had picked up some idea of them from stories, and he soon realised that the Knight and Dragon was a very strange establishment. It was located in a gentle village of thatched cottages, rather than in a [wretched hive](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WretchedHive) of scum and villainy. There were no [bands of heroes meeting up to go on a quest](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouAllMeetInAnInn), let alone insane fire mages [getting roaring drunk and burning the place down](https://irregularwebcomic.net/comic.php?current=650&theme=2&dir=next). It wasn’t at all the sort of tavern where a [wastrel prince](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Theatre/HenryIVPart1) might go to drink with thieves and prostitutes and play pranks on the waiters, until danger threatened the kingdom and called him to heroism. It was just a place where people went after work to have a mug of ale or cider, and maybe play darts; where families went for a meal when they felt like a change of scene or couldn’t be bothered cooking; where young men and maidens courted before they knew each other well enough to sneak off into the woods and caves for some privacy; where the wassailers met to practise their songs; and where the mummers performed their plays.

The ‘family’, for want of a better description, ordered a meal and ate it. Gardas, sitting with Perdita on his lap, mashed up some of his carrots and offered her a taste. She wasn’t impressed, but after all, as she had had a bottle of milk before leaving the house, she wasn’t in any danger of starving. After lunch, Beatrice offered to take Perdita on her lap while she talked with Auric. Paul had already mooched off to the far end of the alehouse. Gardas found him experimentally throwing darts at the battered old board.

‘Want a game?’ Gardas offered.

Paul sighed with the air of one humouring a small child or an idiot. ‘All right, if you really want to.’

Gardas hit just below the bullseye on his first attempt, and smack in the middle on the next two. Paul hit fairly near the bullseye the first time, threw wildly the second and missed the target altogether, and barely hit the outermost ring on the third. ‘It’s a stupid game, anyway!’ he snapped. ‘I’m going to get another apple juice.’ He stomped off to the bar, collected his drink, and sat down next to Auric. Auric said a few words to his foster-son, and a few minutes later Paul returned to the dartboard. ‘Oh well,’ he sighed, ‘want to play again?’

They played for most of the next hour, and Paul’s aim gradually improved. Gardas refrained from making encouraging comments or offering suggestions, as Paul seemed to want him as an opponent, not a mentor. Besides, considering that he had been right-handed and was now forced to rely on his left hand, Paul really wasn’t bad, and just needed practice.

When other patrons started pointedly waiting near the dartboard, Gardas borrowed a handful of dice from the box of games under one of the benches, and set about teaching Paul how to play fivedice. This was a game which they had sometimes played in the potions farm. Traditionally, it was supposed to be a gambling game, and the religions that most of the children were being brought up in forbade gambling, but, as none of them had had any money to gamble with anyway, they had just jotted down their scores on slates. Sometimes players had agreed in advance that the winner owed the loser some favour, but generally, the satisfaction of winning had been enough.

Paul sighed and muttered over the game, and frequently miscounted the score he had rolled – struggling to concentrate rather than cheating, Gardas thought, as he was as likely to mistake a 28 for a 26 as the other way round. He certainly didn’t have Gardas’s long experience in calculating whether it was better to stick with collecting threes (smaller loss if you don’t get any more of them, as you can always collect fives another time) or switch to collecting fives (greater gain if you can roll enough of them). But, although he kept grumbling that the dice hated him, he didn’t flounce off once.

As the game was drawing to its close, and it was fairly obvious that Gardas had won, they overheard a group of people talking. ‘The Return of the Queen?’ said one man. ‘But that’s just a puppet show! Who’s going to take it seriously for a Maidensday play?’

‘Think how it’s going to look with real people, though!’ said a woman. ‘The Queen willingly dies to save her husband; the King hides his grief to be a good host to his friend Herkle the Hunter; Herkle wrestles Death to the ground and restores the Queen to life. It’s the perfect story for the festival.’

‘We need more people, though,’ said the man. ‘As a puppet show, it’s all very well having the King’s glove-puppet on one hand and Herkle’s on the other, holding up the Queen’s puppet, but we can’t do that in a stage play. We need the Sun, Death, the King, the Queen, at least one child, the King’s old father, and Herkle, not to mention the butler and the maid. That’s nine actors, and old Joe can’t make it any more, his rheumatism’s much too bad, and Tom’s memory is going.’

‘What’s a Maidensday play?’ asked Paul.

‘The one we do at Maidensday, of course,’ said the man. ‘Like the Solstice panto – which we’ve had to cancel, because not enough people felt like being in it. And the weather’s at its worst for getting to rehearsals between Solstice and Maidensday, so the way it’s going, there probably won’t be a Maidensday play either.’

‘My dad – I mean, my foster-dad – has a broomstick,’ offered Paul. ‘And so does my mother – my real mother. And I’ll probably be living here, by Solstice. So – they probably wouldn’t mind giving people lifts, and – maybe I could be in your play?’

‘Well! I think we’d better talk it over with your parents about the lifts,’ said the woman, ‘but if you agreed to act, you’d be saving our necks. I’m Meg, by the way, and this is George. And what about your friend? Would he be willing to act as well, do you think?’

‘He’s not my friend,’ said Paul, and then, ‘Well – sometimes he is. Or my enemy. Or both. But – Gardas, do you want to be in a play?’

Gardas had never even thought about it, but as it was the first time today – or the first time in all Gardas’s experience of Paul – that the boy had shown enthusiasm about anything, Gardas said, ‘Yes. Yes, I would, please.’

They agreed a date for Gardas to meet again with George and Meg and the rest of the mummers, and decide who would be playing which part. The only child part was much smaller, they explained, and Meg could easily write out a copy for Gardas to give to Paul when he had the chance.

After that, the afternoon went sunnily. Paul helped Perdita learn her shapes, and sat companionably near while Beatrice read How to Hunt a Shaman to Gardas and Auric.

Later on, when Paul was in bed, Gardas remarked to Auric, ‘You’re better with Paul than I’ll ever be. I don’t know what you said to him to get him to go on playing when he was losing, but I wish I’d had the sense to say it.’

‘I don’t think it would have worked, coming from you,’ said Auric.

‘What was it?’

‘I told him that he had to make up his mind whether you were a friend or an enemy. I said that if you were a friend, it wasn’t kind to go on making you feel guilty about maiming him, when he knew you were sorry and there was nothing you could do about it now. But if you were his enemy, he mustn’t let you defeat him, and you’d only have won if he gave up trying.’

‘Thank you,’ said Gardas. ‘I think.’

‘It’s Beatrice you’ve got to thank,’ Auric said. ‘She was the one who noticed how he was losing heart. But – he wouldn’t have believed it coming from her, because he can see that Beatrice likes you. So it was just down to me to deliver the line.’


	21. Chapter 21

Over the next month, Paul and Auric came to visit for the day, or for overnight stays, several times. Paul was starting to warm to his new adoptive sister Perdita, now that she was beginning to be fun to play with. She was now crawling around the cottage and investigating everything. As she was now too big to fit into her carrying-basket, and much too mobile to stay in it, Beatrice and Gardas had chosen a large box without a lid to be her ‘bedroom’, with a thick rug lining the bottom so that it was soft enough to sleep on, blankets to keep her warm while she slept, and several of her favourite toys to keep her occupied when she woke. She could stand up by pulling herself up on the sides, to look around the interior of Beatrice’s bedroom. It wouldn’t be long before she learned how to climb out.

To Gardas’s disappointment, she was only moderately interested in the rag-dragon toy, but she enjoyed the patchwork ball which he had made for her to roll around the floor, as well as wooden things to chew on. She loved her clay feeding-bottle, but Gardas had explained to her that bottle-dragon needed to fly safely to a high shelf when he wasn’t feeding her, because he was afraid of little girls who might drop him and hurt him, but that when Perdita was a bit bigger and could take care of him properly, she could have him to play with all the time, and in the meantime, bottle-dragon’s friend rag-dragon was happy to snuggle with her. 

Perdita looked blank when he explained this in Westron (the commonest human language spoken across the Downs, Cideria, and Ottery, and reluctantly understood even in Kernow), but seemed to understand when he translated into Dragonese. Gardas tried to remember to talk to her in Westron at least some of the time, particularly when he read to her. She was old enough now to look at a book if it had pictures in, and several of Beatrice’s books – the herbal, the bestiary, and the medical dictionary – did. There was also a magical book of optical-illusion pictures, but they were so confusing that Gardas could hardly bear to look at them, and he certainly didn’t want to expose a baby to them yet. Looking at an illustration of how to use maggots to treat gangrene, or reading about how the female hyena hath no belle-chose, but hath a maypole like unto the male’s only greater, and thus she conceiveth through her maypole and giveth birth thereby, in great pain and peril, seemed much less disturbing.

At least, Gardas had hoped so, but Perdita cried at this news, until Beatrice reassured her: ‘It’s all right, lovely one. I don’t expect it hurts the mummy hyena for long. Anyway, she thinks it’s worth it. Babies are worth any pain it costs to bring them into the world.’ Gardas had worried that Perdita was too sensitive, but Beatrice told him not to worry, either: ‘The world needs people who care – and someone with the power of a dragon particularly needs to be gentle. There can’t be many people who are compassionate enough to empathise with a beast they’ve never seen, in a far-away country.’

Auric had confirmed (under truth potion) that, at least according to the test, Perdita was definitely not Gardas’s daughter, and this made things simpler for Gardas. She was still his joy, his responsibility (even if Beatrice and Auric were going to be her adoptive parents), the only other were-dragon he knew, and a large part of the reason why he needed to look after himself, to be as nearly sane and stable as possible to care for her, and to accept his dragon-self without either being ashamed of him, or giving in to the urge to kill and destroy. What Perdita wasn’t, any more, was a reason to feel guilty. Neither her existence nor the fact that she was a were-dragon was his fault. He didn’t need to feel ashamed of not remembering Perdita’s mother, since in all probability he had never even met the woman, let alone raped her.

Of course, the fact that the woman whom he actually had raped and fathered a child on was now proposing to adopt Perdita in addition to taking care of Gardas’s own biological child, and even Gardas himself, should have made things awkward, but – somehow, it didn’t. Beatrice just accepted it as obvious that, as they all needed looking after, she was going to look after them, and somehow that could make it seem straightforward and obvious to Gardas, too. Beatrice was more worried about the fact that they hadn’t yet found a tactful way to tell Paul that Gardas was his father, but they agreed that it needed to wait until Paul and Gardas had learnt to get on with each other. 

Paul and Auric were going to be staying for the twelve days of the Solstice festival, before deciding whether they would be moving in for good. When he had any spare time, Gardas worked on making presents out of pieces of scrap-wood saved from the firewood pile: a little cart for Perdita, with a handle tall enough for her to lean on and enough space for her to transport all her toys around, and a chess set for Auric. He couldn’t decide what to get Beatrice, but she insisted that she didn’t need anything, and that just having the family together was enough. For Paul, he made a dartboard out a woven straw mat covered in cloth with numbered sections painted on it. The darts themselves were leftover arrowheads from broken arrows from the archery group, which Gardas had started attending again.

George the schoolmaster, head of the Mummers and sometimes almost their sole member, was also a regular archer, so Gardas had plenty of chances to talk to him about the play, while they were waiting for their turn at the target, or having a drink afterwards. They made a point of talking about the need for cast members loudly enough for the others to overhear. Gardas and Beatrice made a note of mentioning when they were out visiting people that, if any of them had relatives with some free time on their hands, it was too late to put on a Solstice play, but the one planned for Maidensday was looking interesting. 

It wasn’t long before Solstice when George invited Gardas to come round to his cottage for the evening, to read through the play. Eski came with him in cat-form to provide a discreet escort, but then settled down for a cuddle with George’s pet gules dragon, Trixie (short for Getricstrasza), and appeared to take no further interest in the evening’s affairs.

Other than Trixie and Eski, there were seven people there: George and Meg; Gardas himself; old Mrs Gummel and her daughter Nell (Mrs Gummel’s first name turned out to be Elaine, which was also her daughter’s, but the younger Elaine preferred to be known as Nell for short); Harry the farrier; a younger woman called Janet, who worked on a farm. George passed the script between them, asking whichever two people were sitting next to each other to read a scene together (as it had been written as a show for a puppeteer with glove-puppets, there were rarely more than two characters speaking at any one time), and then, after a few exchanges of speeches, asking them to hand the script on to the next two, who would have a go at playing the same characters. 

Gardas wondered whether he would be allowed to play Death, who appeared in the opening scene, grim and terrible, taunting the Sun-god, who had bargained with him to take another life instead of the King’s, and was now trying to persuade him to allow the Queen’s death to be postponed until she was very old. Or perhaps he could play the butler, who, infuriated by the heroic monster-hunter’s drunken carousing, revealed to him that the King was in mourning because his wife had just died? He didn’t think he had the regal bearing to play the King’s old father (this play was set in the days when being king wasn’t a job for life, but only until you got old and wanted to retire and have your son or grandson take over), but he wouldn’t complain if George offered it to him.

At the end of the evening, George said, ‘Well, that was very good, everyone. Now, casting. Who wants to play the Sun?’

Janet and Harry put up their hands, and George chose Harry.

‘Who wants to play Death?’

Gardas, the older Elaine, and Meg put up their hands, and George chose Meg.

‘The Queen’s maid?’

Janet put up her hand, and George nodded enthusiastically. ‘Janet, would you mind playing the butler as well? We don’t have a lot of volunteers, so we might as well make it one part.’

‘Oooh, I’d love to,’ said Janet. ‘Two scenes, eh? And in one of them, I get to tell Herkle the Hunter off!’

‘The Queen? Would you mind doing that, Nell?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Nell.

‘Now, how about the King’s father? Or mother – it doesn’t really matter to the part.’

Gardas and the older Elaine put their hands up, and George chose Elaine.

‘Now, I’ve already chosen the lad who’ll be playing the Prince, but as he’s only got a couple of lines, he doesn’t need to start coming to rehearsals yet,’ said George. ‘So, there are two parts left. Does anyone want to play the King?’

Gardas didn’t even bother putting his hand up. He wasn’t regal and dignified, he knew that. He didn’t look the part. But he hoped that, if he had been in the position the King in the play was in, knowing that he was fated to die on a certain day unless someone else died in his place, he wouldn’t have gone round asking all his friends and relatives whether they wanted to volunteer. Though if Perdita or Paul or Beatrice or Auric had been fated to die, he would willingly have laid down his life for any of them. Maybe he should have asked to be allowed to play the Queen, but George hadn’t even asked him.

‘Well, in that case, I’ll take that part. And, Gardas, how do you feel about playing Herkle the Hunter?’

Gardas blinked. He wasn’t good at explaining how he felt about most things, let alone how he felt about playing a heroic monster-hunter. Harry chuckled, not unkindly, but he nodded, and everyone else was nodding approvingly.

‘Good. I’ll write out everyone’s parts – Gardas, I’ll start with you, because yours is the longest. I can give you a copy of your first scene at the next archery practice. I’ll look forward to seeing you – and for now, goodnight!’

Gardas walked home, still trying to make sense of it all.

‘How did it go?’ Beatrice asked when he got home. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Confused,’ said Gardas at last. ‘That’s how I feel.’

‘Really? What are you confused about?’

‘Why would anyone want me to play Herkle the Hunter?’

‘Why shouldn’t they?’

‘Because he’s a big jolly hero who likes song, cider and sex, and I’m nothing like him.’

‘Maybe,’ said Beatrice. ‘But he’s also a mad, bad, and sad antihero trying to [atone for his crimes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheAtoner), isn’t he? Think of all the legends about him, not just his role in this one play. He’s illegitimate, his father is a serial philanderer and rapist who doesn’t have time for most of his illegitimate children, and his stepmother keeps trying to murder him. Herkle murdered his wife and children in a fit of madness, and as penance, he’s been sentenced to perform a series of incredibly difficult and dangerous tasks. He knows he should have learnt the error of his ways, but even so, he’s still so hot-tempered that he sometimes kills his friends in a moment of rage, and feels terrible about it afterwards. His boss ill-treats him, he doesn’t really have a home of his own, and if it wasn’t for kind friends like the King and Queen in this story, who try to be good hosts to him when he comes to stay with them, he probably wouldn’t be able to cope with it at all. Now, do you really think you’re the wrong person to play him?’

‘I’m a monster. He’s a man who kills monsters.’

‘Sometimes,’ said Beatrice. ‘Or sometimes he tames them. What’s he on his way to do, in this story?’

‘Bring back a team of man-eating, fire-breathing horses.’

‘And he managed to calm the horses down, didn’t he?’

‘I don’t know that story,’ Gardas admitted.

‘He killed their own master – who was the one who’d been driving them mad by training them to eat people instead of hay – and fed their master to them. And then they were satisfied, because they knew that their master was their real enemy, and that he was only spurring them on to become vicious because he enjoyed watching them eat people. I don’t know whether they were still carnivorous and fire-breathers after that, but they settled down quite happily to be useful horses. Some of the plough-horses here to this day are descended from them, though they don’t generally do more than bite or kick if someone really annoys them.’

‘So – the horses eating their master was like me killing Azalar?’ suggested Gardas. ‘And – Herkle knew that was what they wanted to do, because most of the time he felt like killing his master, too, and he knew that he mustn’t, because killing people was what had got him into trouble in the first place?’

‘I hadn’t thought of that!’ said Beatrice. ‘But yes, that must have been what it was. And if you can think like him to that extent, you’re definitely the right person to play him. You might not bring out the side of his character that most people think of in this story, but it’s a side that’s there, all the same.’

‘I’m glad I’m working for you, instead of Herkle’s master,’ said Gardas. ‘And I’m glad this is one story where he does the right thing, and saves someone’s life without needing to kill anyone.’

‘Yes,’ said Beatrice. ‘It doesn’t happen every time, but it’s good when it does.’


	22. Chapter 22

The days grew shorter, and the paths icier and more slippery. One night there was a scattering of snow, which made Beatrice exclaim, ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ and insist on bringing Perdita outside to admire it. Perdita seemed to like it, too. She cooed excitedly, and said to Gardas in Dragonese, ‘ _Down! Play!_ ’ Gardas had never liked winter, which always reminded him of cold, miserable days back at the potions farm, but he put Perdita down long enough for her to crawl in the snow and eat some of it, until she started to grow cold and he brought her inside to change into warm, dry clothes.

The snow soon melted, to be replaced with a cold, wet rain, because it was the eve of the first day of Solstice, and in Cideria, Beatrice had explained, it never snowed at Solstice. It might start up again after Twelfth Night, but now Gardas’s clothes were drenched with a rain that seemed colder than snow, as he went out into the dripping woods to cut bits of holly, ivy, and even a kind of evergreen oak to decorate the cottage. By the time he came back in, Beatrice had heated up a cauldron of water, and brought in the adult-size tin bath – much bigger than the basin they used for washing Perdita – and placed it in front of the fire, for Gardas to have a warm bath before he changed into dry clothes.

‘Shouldn’t we take Perdita upstairs?’ he asked. ‘It’s not right, letting a little girl see me naked.’

‘Too little to be embarrassed,’ Beatrice argued. ‘From her point of view, it’s no different from you seeing her naked when you bath her or change her nappy. Unless you think there’s a risk that you might hurt her when you do those jobs?’ she added.

‘No! No, I don’t feel like that about her. She’s a baby!’

‘And you don’t feel worried about being naked in front of me?’

‘You’re a doctor. You’ve seen everyone with their clothes off.’

‘Well, then. And we don’t have so many neighbours living close enough by that they’re likely to come and spy on you through the windows. Though if you’d like to practice your dragon-transformation down here while you’re undressed, there might be a bit more space than in your bedroom.’

‘We ought to do one today,’ Gardas agreed, easing himself into the warm water, which felt painfully hot to his chilled skin. ‘I don’t want to transform by accident when Paul gets here, and maybe kill him. I think the controlled transformations help.’

‘Except that you don’t need to kill anything,’ said Beatrice. ‘That’s part of what you’re finding out, isn’t it? That being a dragon doesn’t mean you have to kill people or set fire to things.’

‘Can I have some milk?’

‘All right, but not too much. The goats aren’t giving much at this time of year, and I’ll need to save some for tonight. You do like milk in dragon-form, don’t you?’

‘Yes. I can taste it better than when I’m human – taste all the tastes in it.’

‘I suppose there are old legends about dragons demanding milk,’ Beatrice admitted. ‘Just as long as you don’t get so addicted that you start throwing tantrums when there isn’t any.’

‘No.’ Gardas shuddered at the thought. After all, part of the point of these controlled transformations was to train him to be a meek, tame dragon who lay down when Beatrice told him, let her stroke his scaly neck, and certainly wouldn’t hurt a child.

‘ _All right, wormling squirmling,_ ’ he said to Perdita. ‘ _Gardas is going to get out of the bath, and then get changed. Your Mummy’s going to change Man-Gardas into Dragon-Gardas, and then back into Man-Gardas again. Do you want to watch?_ ’

‘ _Yes!_ ’ said Perdita eagerly. She could already speak a little Dragonese, although she couldn’t yet pronounce Westron words.

Gardas got out of the bath and wrapped himself in a towel before throwing his muddy clothes into the tub to soak. Meanwhile, Beatrice poured him a bowl with a smallish quantity of milk, at least from a dragon’s point of view, and set it down on the floor.

‘Are you sure it’s all right to let Perdita watch?’ he asked again.

‘Yes, of course! She’s old enough to learn about being a were-dragon, but she’s still young enough that we need to show her, not tell her. It’ll be the same when it comes to potty-training.’

Gardas blinked. ‘You mean she’ll follow me into the outhouse to watch me peeing?’

‘Or watch you peeing into a chamber-pot in your room. Yes. Children learn by watching and copying. Didn’t they where you grew up?’

‘Well, yes, but – I want her to have a better childhood than mine!’

‘And she will. But just because most of what you were subjected to was wrong and horrible doesn’t mean some of it, like having friends and playing games, or being potty-trained, wasn’t part of a normal childhood.’

Gardas ignored this and stood up with the towel wrapped around him like a cape. ‘ _Now Man-Gardas is going to turn into Dragon-Gardas_ ,’ he said. ‘ _I get bigger when I’m a dragon, don’t I? This towel’s big enough to cover Man-Gardas now, but it’s too small to cover Dragon-Gardas, isn’t it? And I need it to keep me warm now, but I won’t when I’m a dragon, will I?_ ’

He felt his body begin to change, as Beatrice thought the transformation spell at him. Witches didn’t bother with specially-made magic wands, though trainees sometimes used whatever they had available – a twig, say, or an arrow-shaft – to focus their attention. Before Beatrice had had her exchange year in the Walled City, she had bought a birch wand with a griffin-feather core, but had always tried first to see if a spell worked if she simply pointed her fingers, then if it worked if she used a knitting-needle, and only then, whether it worked any better with the official wand. At the time, Gardas and everyone else had assumed she was just doing this to make fun of wizards, but now he understood that she had been experimenting. And, clearly, these days she was so powerful that she didn’t even need to let go of Perdita to point her fingers, or even say any magic words.

‘ _Look, Dragon-Gardas!_ ’ he said. ‘ _My scales are all black, aren’t they? Like my hair when I’m Man-Gardas. You’ll have silver scales, like your pretty silver hair. Maybe ladies with golden hair or red hair turn into Gold dragons and Gules dragons, and men with brown hair turn into Brown dragons. Men who turn into Blue dragons and ladies who turn into Green dragons must look funny, mustn’t they?_ ’

It was easier to keep his mind when Perdita was there, he thought. Nice having Beatrice, too, but she was human, that was different. ‘ _Look at my wings! You’ll have big flapping wings, too, when you’re a dragon. You’ll be much bigger than me, when you’re a Grey dragon – too big to fit in a house…_ ’

The room was tiny. He could hardly fit into it. ‘ _Mustn’t burn the house – mustn’t knock over the bath, mustn’t lash my tail – too small – want to FLY…_ ’

The human was talking to him in human words. ‘Gardas, still! Good dragon. Want some milk?’

Ah, milk, lovely milk. Lovely kind human, to give him milk. Musn’t bite the lovely human. Drink milk instead. He lapped up every drop, then nuzzled against the human. The human held Perdita up to pat him, and Perdita chuckled happily as she did so.

‘Want to turn back?’ the human asked. He nodded, and she kissed him on the snout. At once he was human again, shivering slightly. ‘Thank you,’ he said, as he hurried to get dressed. Come to think of it, Gardas realised, if Beatrice didn’t need to touch him to turn him into a dragon, she probably didn’t need to kiss him to turn him back, either. It was her way of reassuring him that she wasn’t afraid of him and didn’t see him as a monster.

‘Bother!’ said Beatrice, as Gardas finished dressing.

‘What?’

‘I forgot to make a thirteen-month pudding.’

‘Oh.’ Gardas wasn’t sure how serious this was. ‘What is a thirteen-month pudding?’ he asked. ‘Is it a spell?’

‘It’s a ritual – somewhere between a spell and a prayer, but you don’t need to be a witch or a wizard to do it. A month before Solstice, you take dried currants, dried blackberries, dried cherries, dried elderberries, prunes, grated apples, grated carrots, hazelnuts, flour, breadcrumbs, suet, eggs, and brandy. You stir them together and recite: “Stir up, we beseech ye, all ye good gods, the wills of your faithful people, that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruits of your good works may of ye be plenteously rewarded.’ Then you tie the mixture up in a clean cloth and boil it for eight hours, take it out and hide it away in a cool dark place for the next thirteen months, and then bring it out, boil it again to reheat, and eat it. It’s a symbol of hope that you’ll live to see another Solstice, love for your friends who’ll eat the pudding if you don’t, and faithfulness in working to make the coming year go as well as possible. Didn’t you do that, back home?’

‘No.’ At the potions farm, there hadn’t been a festival that everyone shared, though the assorted priests came on different holy days with treats for the children of their religion. Later on, working for Azalar’s family, Gardas had been kept busy making cakes, pies and biscuits for special occasions, but none that had special rituals like this. ‘What would happen if we made one now?’ he asked.

‘Good question. A twelve-month pudding would probably work nearly as well – or better still, wait until Auric and Paul are here, and make a nearly-twelve-month pudding. The eighth of Solstice is a traditional day for making vows for the coming year, so that should work. And we’ve got more to work on, today.’

They made up a bed for Paul in the middle bedroom, and moved Perdita’s box-bed into Gardas’s bedroom, to leave more privacy in Beatrice and Auric’s room. Beatrice insisted on leaving Perdita for a longer nap than usual, feeding her and soothing her to sleep whenever she woke, as she wasn’t likely to get much sleep tonight. Gardas worried about disrupting the child’s routine, but didn’t argue, as there was so much work to do without keeping Perdita entertained as well.

After decorating the living-room, and checking that the toys Gardas had made were wrapped in sacking and hidden out of sight in the woodshed, they were kept busy with preparing food for nightfall. There had to be hot mulled cider, cheese and onion tarts, and tiny venison pasties from a haunch of meat that one of the farmers had donated from a deer who had strayed into his field. Gardas was out giving the goats their evening milking when he heard [singing voices, a mixture of humans and kobolds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZibVuNoDsM):

A-wassail, a-wassail, all over the town!

Our cup it is white and our ale it is brown.

(The milk it is white, and our fur it is brown, added a kobold – Eski? – in an undertone)

Our cup it is made of the white maple tree;

With a wassailing bowl we’ll drink to thee.

Now here is to Speckle and her scaly legs;

May the gods send our village a good crop of eggs:

A good crop of eggs as e’er I did see!

With a wassailing bowl we’ll drink to thee.

Now here is to Bessie and to her strong horn;

May the gods send our village a good crop of corn.

(But if you don’t give us a wassailers’ treat,

May a fine crop of corns all grow on your feet! added Eski)

Now here is to Perdita, to her bright eyes;

May the gods send our village a winter sunrise:

As fine a sunrise as e’er I did see!

With a wassailing bowl we’ll drink to thee.

Now here is to Gardas and to his dark wings;

May the gods send our village the season’s turning:

As fine a turning as e’er I did see!

With a wassailing bowl we’ll drink to thee.

Now here’s to the witch in the black linen smock

Who slipped to the door and pulled back the lock;

Who slipped to the door and pulled back on the pin

For to let these jolly wassailers in.


	23. Chapter 23

Gardas emerged from the shed with the buckets of milk to find the house door open, and the small group of wassailers: George, Meg, Eski, Tallis, and a couple more kobolds whom Gardas didn’t know, dancing inside. Kobolds almost never wore clothes, but tonight these four were dressed for the season, in green jackets and red knitted caps. Beatrice was trying to be hospitable, at the same time as dissuading Perdita from pulling the wing of George’s dragon, Trixie. ‘There’s mulled cider here – anyone who’d prefer milk, it’s just come – does anyone want a pasty?’

Eski eagerly took one for herself and another to feed to Trixie, but Tallis snorted, ‘Nuts!’ and Beatrice directed him to the dishes of chestnuts and hazelnuts.

‘We’ll need your goats,’ said Eski, through a mouthful of pasty.

‘Ready and waiting,’ said Beatrice. ‘Don’t overload Bramble, will you? She’s not nearly as strong as Bessie.’

‘We’ll manage,’ said Eski, and she and the other kobolds disappeared outside, taking the food and drinks with them. The humans, were-dragons and actual dragon danced a little longer, Trixie zooming round the room and just about managing not to knock into anything, and Gardas jiggling an excited Perdita in his arms.

‘Our turn to go out, now,’ said Beatrice after a few minutes had passed. ‘We’d better make sure Perdita’s well wrapped up, and – it’s not still raining, is it?’

‘No, beautifully clear,’ said George. ‘You can see every star in the sky. It’s going to be frosty, though.’

‘Oh, good. A perfect Solstice night.’

Gardas wasn’t sure why dry and mild wouldn’t have done just as well, but he put Perdita’s little coat and hat on, wrapped her in a blanket, and carried her out into the night. George went ahead with the lantern, but it helped that there was a bright full moon overhead. 

‘Moo!’ cried Perdita excitedly, in Westron rather than Dragonese. It was her first attempt at a human word.

‘Yes, moon!’ repeated Gardas, also in Westron. ‘The Cow in the Moon is giving us one of her full cheeses tonight, isn’t she?’

The humans laughed, and Perdita laughed because they were laughing. Gardas was still getting used to having friends who laughed when he intentionally made a joke, even a baby-sized joke, instead of laughing at him. And they were his friends – not just Beatrice and Perdita, now, but George and Meg who were – starting to become friends.

‘And when the cheese is eaten away, we’ll see the cow’s horns again,’ added Beatrice.

George struck up the song again:

Now here’s to the sun, and the Cow in the Moon;

May the gods send our village fine milk as a boon:

A good crop of milk as e’er I did see!

With a wassailing bowl we’ll drink to thee.

They wound their way through the village, singing blessings (sometimes mingled with threats) on human neighbours, livestock, trees, and anything else they passed. Nearly everyone they sang to came out and joined them, sometimes offering food and drink if the kobolds hadn’t already taken it, and bringing any leftovers with them, along with firewood. Gardas avoided eating too much, in case dancing made him feel sick, and avoided drinking anything that was likely to get him drunk. He decided, though, that a couple of small cups of mulled cider now probably didn’t count – after all, the heating would have killed much of the alcohol.

Eventually, everyone reached the village green. The next step in the rite was building up a bonfire (since they could hardly have done this any earlier without its being drenched in rain), and then letting Trixie and some of the other tame Gules dragons in the village snort fire at it to light it. When it was blazing reassuringly, the Gules dragons soared up into the air, and flitted to and fro overhead, snorting little jets of flame to let people know where they were, and chasing bats. For a moment, Gardas wished he had come in dragon form, or had the confidence to transform here in front of everyone. Then he remembered that his fire blighted and poisoned instead of merely burning. Not good, for a festival.

In the meantime, anyone in the village who could play an instrument had brought it, and the evening’s singing and dancing continued. There were humans with shawms, bagpipes, fiddles and tabors, plus Xanthus playing a lyre, and a kobold called Hob twanging a mouth-harp. There were sombre hymns to the winter gods, merrier tunes calling to the gods of spring, lively dance tunes, lullabies – not that any children had any intention of sleeping tonight – sad songs of soldiers fighting far from home or forsaken lovers or quarrelling old couples, funny ballads, and more dance tunes.

Most of the dances either involved forming into groups of eight consisting of four pairs, or long lines consisting of lots of pairs, and forming arches or running down the middle. There didn’t seem to be any rules about the pairs being different sexes, though it worked better if they weren’t too far different in height. It was all very different from the one school ball Gardas remembered attending, where people wore their best robes and everyone had to fill in a dance card promising which dances they would dance with whom, but he had the same problem of having no idea what the rules were, or whether there even were any rules. Beatrice suggested that they should take it in turns for one of them to look after Perdita while the other danced. Gardas wasn’t sure whether he had drunk more than he had intended, or whether he was just moving clumsily because he didn’t know any of these dances, but he decided that in case he was drunk, he wasn’t safe to be in charge of Perdita, and therefore probably needed to go on dancing. Confusingly, George called out a change to a different dance whenever Gardas had been starting to get the hang of the last one, but plenty of other people weren’t sure what they were doing, either, and they just laughed if they were out of step with the music or bumped into each other.

When everyone rested from dancing, they ate the food which the kobolds had collected for the feast. After that, the kobolds – there were a dozen of them assembled here, with more than twenty goats carrying panniers or sacks on their backs – went around distributing presents. They had unwrapped the sacking around Perdita’s little cart, and hitched its handle to a harness for Bramble to pull. By now, on top of the dartboard and chess set that Gardas had made, there was a heap of presents from other villagers – a mixture of baby toys, clothes, and food. 

At some point in the evening, Auric and Paul must have flown in on their borrowed mop, laden with their bags, and joined in the dancing, but Gardas didn’t notice them until late into the night, almost morning, when he heard Paul mutter, ‘Oh, yuk!’ and looked round to see Beatrice and Auric dancing together on their own, Auric’s hand on Beatrice’s waist, gazing into each other’s eyes, while Eski (still in her festive clothes) looked after Perdita.

‘We’ll have to get used to it,’ Gardas pointed out.

‘Yeah, but – in public?’ groaned Paul.

‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ called George. ‘Honourable kobolds and dragons, and most esteemed Xanthus! This year, I am sorry to say that we will not be able to produce a Boxing Day panto with lots of jokes and songs, as no-one agreed to be in it in time. However, I can still offer you the Solstice pageant – in miniature!’

Standing by the ashes of the dying bonfire, he held up his hands together, one of them holding an outsize glove-puppet of a hugely pregnant woman, clothed in a blue dress embroidered with a yellow sun and a white moon, with a crown made of twelve stars on her head. George piped up in a falsetto voice:

Alas! My pains are coming, while I roam

An exile, lost upon this lonely heath!

Oh, who will give me shelter in their home? 

Oh, who will save me from the dragon’s teeth?

At a click of George’s tongue, Trixie swooped down from the sky and hovered a short distance from the woman. George made his voice sound as a dragon might, if it were a dragon much bigger than Trixie, as violent as Gardas felt the urge to be in dragon-form, and could speak fluent Westron:

Fear not, milady, ‘tis not you I crave;

My hope is but to eat your infant son.

The woman puppet flailed at Trixie, who backed off. George continued in his ‘dragon’ voice:

You dare to fight a dragon? Oh, so brave –

But who can save HIS life, when yours is done?

George pulled his hands apart, to make the woman puppet ‘give birth’ to that of a young man dressed in workmen’s clothes like most of the villagers. He spoke now in a third voice, evidently that of the young hero:

I come into the world to wage my war

Against the powers of hatred, fear, and sin.

I serve the gods, love virtue, keep the law –

But can I conquer all my fears within?

George clicked his tongue again, and Trixie flew closer to the man puppet. Dragon voice again:

Are you a poor man? Come and follow me;

I’ve many a treasure piled within my lair.

The man puppet stood his ground, neither striking nor backing away. He retorted:

Be off! I’ll earn my living honestly;

Your plundered wealth is nothing but a snare.

The dragon tried again:

Come, ride on me, and I will give you power;

My fires and blight will conquer all your foes.

The hero retorted:

A tyrant’s reign is but a fading flower;

He falls much faster than he ever rose.

The dragon tried a third time:

I have a stone of immortality,

Life free from worry, sickness, pain, or death,

Which I will give you if you’ll work for me –

Or would you rather perish from my breath?

The hero replied:

Be off! I serve the gods, and them alone –

As you, like all the beasts, were born to do.

YOU may join me, and leave your magic stone –

But if you won’t, I’ll never work for you.

Yes, I fear death – what creature does not fear? –

But I will face my fate, be it far or near.

Trixie, at another nod from George, flew off, but George’s voice indicated the dragon-villain’s parting words:

Yes, boast for now that you will stand your ground.

But will you dare it when it comes around?

‘And that is all for now,’ said George, in his normal voice. ‘But, by Maidensday, we hope to give you The Return of the Queen – NOT as a puppet show!’ There was clapping and cheering, partly because people were enjoying the night and ready to cheer for anything, but mainly because the sun was coming up at last, red and half-veiled in mists. 

As it rose, Gardas saw something he had never seen in his life: a patch of rainbow-coloured light to one side of the sun. Come to think of it, there was one on the other side, too. They didn’t join up to form an arc or circle, as a rainbow should, and the colours were the wrong way round: purple on the ‘outer’ side, and red on the ‘inner’, nearest the sun. He wondered whether he was imagining them, but Beatrice saw where he was looking. ‘They’re called Hounds of the Sun,’ she explained. ‘They’re quite rare, and they only come out when there’s ice in the air. Seeing them at all is supposed to be good luck, and on an important festival like Solstice or Maidensday is even better.’

As they walked home to breakfast and a good day’s sleep (the mop hovering at shoulder-height to carry some of the Solstice presents, as well as Paul’s and Auric’s baggage), Beatrice said, ‘I hope the play didn’t upset you. A lot of the older ones cast dragons as villains, and, well…’

‘It’s all right,’ said Gardas. ‘Sometimes, we are.’


	24. Chapter 24

The Solstice Festival wound on. There were various rituals for each day, of singing or lighting candles or telling stories, but these didn’t need the whole village to assemble; mainly it was a time when people celebrated in their homes, and invited neighbours round. Most days, Beatrice and her household either were invited round to a neighbour’s house for lunch or dinner, or brought neighbours round to theirs, the older people being ferried on the broom or the mop, with Beatrice or Auric driving, if they were too frail to walk up the steep, alternately-icy-or-wet path to Beatrice’s cottage. In between times, Beatrice, Gardas, Auric, Paul, and Perdita tried to get used to being a family.

Auric had brought presents: robes with rain-repelling charms. He was allowed to work magic under supervision, as he was still on probation, and Beatrice was his supervisor from now on. This meant they needed a lot of time alone in their room to discuss the spells that Auric was working on (or that was what Auric claimed they were doing). Auric was working on creating things to help people back home in the Downs, such as house-tents.

From comments that Auric and Paul made, it sounded as though they were relieved to be in a human house rather than a troll’s cave, and that Granny Flint was glad to be free of them. She was probably celebrating whatever the troll midwinter festival involved, which was probably joyous, as trolls are at their most comfortable in cold weather and long dark nights, but almost certainly did not involve lighting bonfires.

While Beatrice and Auric were busy, Gardas did his best to be a good host to Paul, mainly keeping him occupied with chess or darts or fivedice. He had never been able to get the hang of chess, while Paul had played it quite a bit with his adoptive parents, other children, and later Auric. So, if Paul was feeling disappointed at losing at darts or fivedice too many times, he could at least feel comfortably superior about his chess skills, and even offer to handicap himself by removing some of his pieces to give Gardas more chance.

‘It’d be more interesting if pieces could change sides,’ Paul remarked on one occasion, after checkmating Gardas with just a queen, a knight, and a couple of pawns. ‘What if the white queen turns out to be working for the red side after all, and suddenly checkmates the white king, who’s been standing next to her, all unsuspecting?’

‘Or the red knight is about to take the white queen, when suddenly one of the red pawns takes him,’ added Gardas. 

‘Maybe that’s why she decides to checkmate her own king, after she gets back home across the board,’ Paul suggested.

‘Could you have a rule where a red piece turns white if it’s surrounded by white pieces?’ asked Gardas.

‘No! That would be cowardly, and chess pieces aren’t cowards.’

‘You ought to have character notes for each piece, and roll dice to decide whether the pawns decide to mutiny against insane battle plans,’ said Gardas. ‘Have you ever played Cars & Computers? That’s a fantasy role-playing game that Auric and Azalar used to play sometimes, set in an imaginary world where there’s no magic but carriages run without horses or fly through the air by technology. Do you know it?’

‘No!’ snapped Paul. ‘I’ve been fighting an actual war from the age of eleven – I didn’t have time to play at fighting fantasy wars against the curse of global warming!’

Gardas was getting used to Paul’s sudden mood swings, so didn’t bother to point out that it was Paul who had started the conversation. ‘All right, I’m immature,’ he said. ‘Comes of being a were-dragon. Let’s play fivedice next.’ At least they had had a civil conversation for nearly five minutes, which was certainly progress.

Eski spent most of the festival with them, usually in cat-form and seemingly asleep, but, Gardas suspected, still listening to how they treated each other. Auric was doing well in studying for his parenting licence, and would probably be able to take his test by Candletide, or, failing that, by Maidensday. Occasionally Eski resumed humanoid form to join in games, or teach Paul and Gardas kobold songs to sing to Perdita. One of these, which she taught them the words to in both Dragonese and Westron, [went as follows](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=an+old+austrian+went+yodeling+):

An old goatherd went yodelling on a mountaintop high,

When along came a cuckoo interrupting his cry.

Yo-ley-hee, yo-da-lay-hee – cuckoo! – yo-da-lay-hee-hoo…

It was a typical children’s song, in which you added more and more animal noises with each verse. Neither Eski nor Gardas nor Paul had any idea what sort of animals really lived on the far-off snowy mountains where the song was set, and Gardas and Paul weren’t even sure whether mountains so high that they were covered in snow all year round were really real, or just a traveller’s tale. So they threw in whatever creatures they were used to: a pheasant (squawk, squawk!), a dragon (huff, huff! Miming blowing fire, arms flapping like wings), a cow, and so on. The penultimate verse, though, was always:

An old goatherd went yodelling on a mountaintop high,

When along came some mountain dwarves interrupting his cry.

Yo-ley-hee, yo-da-lay-hee – [Hi-ho, hi-ho!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI0x0KYChq4) – yo-da-lay-hee-hoo…

Followed by:

An old goatherd went yodelling on a mountaintop high,

When along came an avalanche interrupting his cry.

Paul, who had been dutifully memorising this ditty just because Perdita seemed to like it, roared with laughter when he first heard this conclusion. Even after having seen so much war and destruction in real life, he still had the same macabre sense of humour of most children his age.

On the morning of the eighth day, it was time for everyone to sit around the table shelling nuts or grating carrots, apples, and stale bread, to make next Solstice’s pudding. They had to hope that it would taste nearly as delicious as the one they had eaten on the first day of the festival, even without having had the full thirteen months to mature. Everyone took a turn to stir the mixture and recite the incantation, and vow one thing they were going to do in the coming year. Gardas knew exactly what he needed to vow to do, and it was something he had better get over with as soon as possible. After a lunch of bread and cheese (since the cauldron was taken up with boiling the pudding), Gardas said to Paul, ‘Want to go out for a walk? It’s not raining, just now.’

‘All right,’ said Paul. ‘Are you coming, Auric?’

‘No, I’ll stay here with Perdita,’ said Auric. ‘If I’m going to become her father, I need the practice.’ Eski purred approval.

Paul and Gardas walked out into the woods, and up along Gardas’s favourite path, along the edge of a deep ravine full of long beech-trunks growing up towards the distant sunlight.

‘We need to talk,’ said Gardas. It wasn’t going to be an easy conversation. He wished he had thought to bring a bottle of truth potion with him, which always made it easier to get out what he needed to say. Would Paul even believe him, without it?

There was a fallen tree-trunk lying beside the path, sheltered by another tree and not too soggy. Gardas sat down on it. Paul sat beside him, without a word.

‘You know you thought Azalar was your father, and Beatrice told you he wasn’t?’

‘What – you’re going to tell me he was, after all? Or am I Auric’s real son, only he doesn’t want to admit it, 'cos they weren’t married at the time?’

‘No, Paul. I am your father.’

Paul stared at him, with distaste rather than shock or horror. ‘YOU? But – Auric was my mum’s boyfriend when she came to the Downs, right?’ Gardas nodded. ‘And she’s – they’re – well, whatever they’re doing now, they’re going to get married so as to do it respectably, aren’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘So where do you fit in?’ Paul stood up, too agitated to sit still any more. ‘Mum didn’t dump Auric and sleep with you to get back at him, did she? And she invited YOU to move in with her as soon as we got to Cideria, instead of us…’ He was pacing up and down now, never quite looking Gardas in the eye. ‘What’s she playing at? Has she been sleeping with you while we were in the cave? She’s not going to go on doing it, is she? WHAT’S GOING ON?’

‘It’s not like that,’ said Gardas hastily, making sure he got the words out before they crawled back down her throat. ‘Not her fault. I raped her.’

Paul slipped on a patch of wet mud, and fell off the edge of the ravine. He tried to grab at a tree-trunk as he fell, but it was with his withered arm, which flopped helplessly.

Gardas swooped down at once. Fortunately, the boy had landed in the crown of a tree, which had broken his fall. Far, far below, there were rocks which could easily have smashed him. Gardas picked the boy up in his strong, clawed front feet, and flew back with him to the house. Beatrice would know what to do. Need to get her to turn him, Gardas, human again, but that could wait. Paul might be hurt. Maybe not physically hurt, but in his heart.


	25. Chapter 25

Gardas landed outside the cottage door, rearing slightly on his hind paws so that he could lower Paul gently to the ground. Paul stood up without looking at him, and opened the door.

‘You’re back early,’ said Beatrice, and then, catching sight of Gardas outside the door, ‘Are you all right, both of you? What happened?’

‘Fine,’ muttered Paul.

‘ _Paul fell from the edge of the ravine and landed in a tree,_ ’ said Gardas. ‘ _Check that he’s not hurt._ ’

Eski translated this, and Beatrice asked a series of worried maternal questions, to which Paul irritably repeated that he was fine, no, he hadn’t broken an arm or leg, hadn’t hit his head on anything, hadn’t lost consciousness, didn’t have a headache, he was slightly scratched and bruised but otherwise FINE, why wouldn’t people just leave him alone?

‘What about you, Gardas?’ said Beatrice. ‘Want to be human again?’ He nodded. Beatrice fetched a blanket before kissing his lowered head, so that he could wrap up warmly as soon as he turned human.

‘How can you KISS him after what he did?’ exclaimed Paul incredulously.

‘It’s just to turn him human again,’ explained Beatrice. ‘Because Gardas doesn’t have his magical powers any more, he can’t turn back into a human by himself.’

‘So why bother?’ snapped Paul. ‘Why shouldn’t a monster look like a monster? He told me what he did to you! He’s not even sorry! He doesn’t have any feelings at all – I don’t know if that’s being a were-dragon, or just HIM! Why do you keep on acting as if he’ll turn into a proper human if you go on pretending that he is one? Why’s he HERE? And why did you choose him over me? Well?’ He turned to face Gardas. ‘Aren’t you even going to say anything?’

Gardas realised that he was shaking, and not from cold. ‘Can I have a calming potion?’ he asked. ‘I need to go and lie down.’ He feared that if he didn’t, he might turn back into a dragon.

‘Yes, of course. You look as if you need a hot drink, too, and a hot-water-bottle – I’ll bring them up to you. What about you, Paul?’ Paul made no response. ‘Oh well, I’ll make you a cup of tea anyway.’

Gardas went up to his room, changed into his nightshirt in the interests of decency, and wrapped the blanket back around him. He would need to go out soon and retrieve his clothes – especially that charmed cloak. In the meantime – he knew he deserved to feel miserable. He was, as Paul said, a monster. And even if Gardas himself thought that he was truly sorry for what he’d done, maybe he didn’t feel emotions in the same way that a human did, and he only didn’t know the difference because he had never been a normal human. 

But at the same time, he realised that when Paul was so upset, Gardas making himself miserable as well wouldn’t help. It would only worry Beatrice, because she couldn’t be in different rooms to comfort both of them at once. Gardas huddled under the blankets, seeking warmth – which became easier when Auric came in with the cup of tea, calming potion, and hot-water-bottle.

‘Beatrice is trying to get Paul to calm down long enough to listen,’ Auric reported. ‘Do you need anything?’

‘Just sleep.’

‘Fine. See you when you’re rested, then.’

Gardas took How Not to Propose Marriage from the bedside table, and began to read. It was fairly obviously going to be a romantic comedy, probably involving the widow the hero had met in his last adventure (not that she had been a widow at the start of it) and her young son. Of course, the woman’s husband, even though he knew that he and his son were gravely ill, had been stupid enough to refuse to let the hero use his demon’s magic to heal them – and then died as a result of panicking when the hero used his magic to break them out of that prison – well, good riddance to him, but of course all but the few people who knew what had happened now suspected that the hero was a murderer. The heroine, who did know the truth, was just determined never to get married again, to anyone. But even so – of all the women and werewolves whom the hero had been in love with in his adventures so far, this had been the first beloved who hadn’t said, ‘Sorry, I can’t live with your pet demon.’

Gardas wondered again whether he was Beatrice’s demon. Auric was willing enough to tolerate him. But Paul was a different matter.

He tried to concentrate on the story, but it was hard to follow. He couldn’t really see why the heroine was angry about all the things the hero did. Probably it had something to do with human emotions that a were-dragon could never understand. At any rate, he read until his tea cooled enough to be drinkable, drank it and followed it with the calming potion, and fell asleep.

It was evening when he woke. He went downstairs to find Beatrice sitting reading while Paul and Auric played chess. Paul looked up at his approach. ‘Mum – explained things a bit more,’ he said awkwardly. ‘You didn’t explain about Azalar and the love potions and stuff.’

‘I didn’t have time. You fell off a cliff,’ Gardas pointed out.

‘Yeah, well – I’m sorry I said all that stuff about you not being sorry and not having feelings and stuff. It’s just – I couldn’t tell from the way you said it, whether you were boasting, or didn’t care, or what. You just don’t sound as if you have feelings – or not when you’re speaking Westron, anyway. Frankly, it’s easier to understand you when you’re speaking Dragonese!’

‘Why doesn’t my face show feelings?’ Gardas asked. ‘Perdita isn’t like that. We can see how she’s feeling, or why she’s crying.’

‘You can, because you’ve made a study of Perdita-body-language,’ said Beatrice. ‘I’ve had time to learn Gardas-body-language, too. But Paul isn’t an expert on Gardas-body-language, yet. So if you can’t show how you feel, then you need to tell people, in words.’

‘What if there isn’t time?’ Gardas repeated.

‘Well – maybe it’s best not to blurt out important revelations without an interpreter standing by,’ suggested Beatrice. ‘Especially not to someone who’s already agitated and is standing on the edge of a cliff.’

‘He needed to know,’ Gardas argued. ‘If he thought you cheated on Auric with me, he’d have to hate both of us. This way, he just had to hate me twice as much.’

‘But it made him hate himself as well,’ Beatrice added.

Gardas tried to make sense of this. ‘Why? It’s not his fault.’

‘It’s not your fault you’re a were-dragon, but you still use that as an excuse to condemn yourself,’ Beatrice pointed out.

‘How would you have felt at Paul’s age, if someone had told you that you were the product of rape?’ added Auric.

‘I probably was,’ Gardas said. ‘Children whose parents wanted them don’t get handed over to potions farms.’

‘Or given up for adoption,’ added Paul.

Beatrice had looked serenely in control of the conversation, but now her face fell. ‘Oh. You thought I didn’t want you?’

‘Why would you? I was the spawn of your enemy.’

‘Of someone who had hurt me once, very uncharacteristically, when he’d been a good friend for most of the year,’ corrected Beatrice. ‘But anyway – oh, Paul, I never hated you! I was sixteen and didn’t have a parenting licence, and by the time I’d studied for one, you were three, and Auric told me in his letters how happy you were with your adoptive parents. You were old enough to know that your real parents were the people who looked after you, and much too young to cope with having two different sets of parents. But – that’s not an excuse. I could have brought you with me when I came back to Cideria, and asked my parents to look after you while I studied for my licence, and that way we’d have had the chance to get to know each other. But I didn’t think of it.

‘And then suddenly the Dark Lord Azalar was becoming more and more powerful across the Downs, and Granny Flint took me to a meeting of all the witches in the area, to discuss flying around the whole Downs country to put a quarantine boundary around it before it was too late. And I tried to explain that I had a child who’d be trapped there, and could I fly in to rescue you first, and Granny Flint gave me that look – you know the one – and said, “Personal isn’t the same as important, young lady!” and Gammer Feare asked what I’d say to the parents of all the children here who might get killed while I was fetching you, and Nana Hithril – she was the oldest kobold I’d ever met, so old that nearly all her fur had fallen out, and she had second sight – she said, “It’ll be all right. Trust me.”

‘Well, if I’d been a hero, I’d have ignored them all, flown in and searched for you anyway, and probably I or Gardas or both of us would have killed Azalar then, and the Downs would have been spared ten years of war, and however many years of hardship they’ve got before the land recovers. But I wasn’t a hero, and if I had flown in, I’d probably just have got myself killed and left all the countries around the Downs undefended. As it was – well, I’m just glad you’re all here now. Neither of your biological parents was very good for you, I’m afraid. Can you forgive us?’

‘I s’pose,’ said Paul. ‘Gardas rescued me in the end, after all. Gardas – did you know I was your son?’

‘No,’ Gardas admitted. ‘I – you smelled like Beatrice, and you made me remember her, and then I didn’t want to be a monster who ate children any more.’

‘But if you guessed I was Beatrice’s son, you must have realised I was yours – unless she had loads of boyfriends,’ Paul added cheekily.

Gardas glared at him. ‘Don’t joke about your mother,’ he said. ‘And – no, I didn’t think like that. I could think, better than I can when I’m a dragon now, but I only thought about fighting and hunting. I’d stopped thinking about Beatrice,’ he added, ashamed.

‘So you didn’t save me because I was your son,’ said Paul. ‘And you definitely didn’t save me because I’m a nice person, because I’m not. So – I suppose that means you saved me because you were a decent person. Or because you wanted to be, anyway. And, well, if you were brought up on a potions farm and then were Azalar’s slave from the age of eleven, you hadn’t had much chance to learn what being good means, but somehow you’re still better at it than I am! So I don’t think you are a monster, after all.’

‘Beatrice doesn’t, either,’ said Gardas.

‘Neither do I,’ added Auric.

‘So – maybe I’m not,’ said Gardas.

‘And maybe I won’t be, even if I do turn out to be a were-dragon,’ said Paul. ‘Will I? I mean, not all were-dragons have goat-eyes, necessarily, do they?’

‘Not always, no,’ said Beatrice. ‘Xanthus would know more about it, but as far as I can make out, it’s quite likely that you’re just a human with were-dragon ancestry, and that if you marry someone else who has that, then your children or grandchildren might be were-dragons.’

‘But if I do turn out to be a were-dragon, then I won’t be able to control when I change shape, any more than Gardas can,’ said Paul. ‘Because we’ve lost our magic, and we need magic to control it, don’t we?’

‘That’s right,’ said Beatrice.

‘I’m sorry I took your magic away,’ said Gardas. ‘I know I don’t sound sorry, but I am.’

‘And I’m truly sorry I took yours away from you,’ said Auric. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing but we could just have left the magic-restraining collar on you until we did know what effect not being able to work magic had on you. It was inexcusable. I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to forgive me.’

‘I don’t know what forgive means,’ said Gardas. ‘But I don’t hate you. I don’t hate anyone here, except sometimes myself, and I don’t want to hate myself if you all think I shouldn’t.’

‘I hate everyone sometimes,’ said Paul. ‘But only when I’m grumpy, and it doesn’t last for long. I don’t really hate anyone here – not seriously. And Gardas, if I do turn out to be a were-dragon, maybe we’ll finally be able to talk to each other in Dragonese without having stupid misunderstandings.’


	26. Chapter 26

‘You DELIBERATELY get my mum to turn you into a dragon?’ said Paul.

‘Yes.’ Gardas remembered what Beatrice had said about using more words, and added, ‘It was Xanthus’s idea. It’s so that she can train me not to fly around burning and killing, every time I’m a dragon. I can stay calm better, when Beatrice is with me. Sometimes Eski and Perdita, too. And – it helps me not to transform by accident.’

‘You mean you’ve got a level of dragonishness building up in you, and you have to drain it off every so often, so that it doesn’t spill out?’ suggested Paul. ‘Like – going to the privy at break-time, so you don’t have to go in the middle of a lesson?’

‘I suppose.’

‘So – you swooping down on me in the woods yesterday was the equivalent of wetting your pants?’

‘Ye– no,’ said Gardas, after thinking about it. ‘It was like that when it happened before, when I turned into a dragon because I got angry. But with you – I wasn’t angry at all. I just needed to rescue you from that tree, so I became the shape I needed to be, I think.’

‘When mum turns you into a dragon, do you ever go flying with her? Not clutched in your claws, I mean, but her sitting on your back?’

‘No. We’ve only practised in the house. Not enough room.’

‘Do you miss flying?’ asked Paul.

‘Yes.’ Of the two times he had flown as a dragon since he came to Cideria, one had been that terrible evening that he’d made a hash of being a babysitter, and realised that he would never get his parenting licence. The other had been yesterday, when he had been concentrating on bringing Paul safely home before the boy could try to throw himself off any more high places. So, both times, Gardas had been either too depressed or too preoccupied to savour the joy of flying, but it had been there, all the same – the wind in his wings, the Ciderian hills and valleys laid out under him, and above all, the smell of Cideria, as rich and fruity as the pudding they had made. It was a noticeably pleasant smell even in human form, but to a dragon’s senses, it was overwhelmingly delicious.

‘I miss riding a broom – driving it, not just being a passenger behind mum or Auric. Do you miss that, too?’

‘Not really. Flying as a dragon beats it. It’s the best part of being a dragon. Even better than hunting or killing or breathing fire.’

‘Could we go flying with me on your back?’ asked Paul. Gardas hesitated. Paul added, ‘Or don’t you want to?’

‘I’d love to,’ said Gardas. ‘But we’d better ask Beatrice. And Auric.’

When asked, Beatrice and Auric hesitated and looked at each other uneasily, but finally Beatrice said, ‘All right. But I don’t think you two should go on your own, the first time.’

‘Will you come?’ asked Gardas. ‘I can manage two riders.’

‘I could, but I’m not sure I’d be much help,’ said Beatrice. ‘I was thinking of Eski, if she doesn’t mind. She’s a good rider – and she can speak Dragonese.’

Eski, who had been happily curled up by the fire, twitched her tail irritably at being disturbed. ‘Now?’ she grumbled. ‘In the rain?’

‘It’s not raining,’ Paul explained. ‘The sky got all that out of its system this morning.’

‘It’ll start again soon,’ muttered Eski. ‘This is Cideria in winter. If it isn’t snowing, it’s raining.’

‘It’s all bright at the moment,’ Paul pointed out. ‘We can go flying until it starts raining again, can’t we? Please?’

‘Oh, all right. Just for a little while.’

Gardas went to his room to change out of his clothes into a blanket, and then stood in the porch, barefoot, while Beatrice worked the spell. In dragon-form, he crouched down so that Paul and Eski could climb onto his back, and settle into the gaps between his spikes. Paul struggled to pull himself up one-handed. Auric offered to help him up, at which Paul snapped, ‘I’m not completely useless!’ and managed to haul himself into position.

‘ _Are you ready?_ ’ asked Gardas.

‘He says…’ began Eski in Westron.

‘ _Yes, I’m ready_ ,’ said Paul in Dragonese. ‘ _Eski, are you?_ ’

‘ _I’m good,_ ’ said Eski.

‘ _I’m good and ready,_ ’ said Paul. ‘ _Let’s go!_ ’

As Gardas flapped his wings a couple of times and rose into the air, he could hear Auric, down below, saying in Westron, ‘I wish they had something to tie themselves on with,’ and Beatrice saying, ‘We don’t tie ourselves onto brooms, and we manage.’ But parents were none of their concern now.

‘ _I love the way this country smells,_ ’ Gardas said. ‘ _Even in winter, if it’s not frozen, the smell is still there. Can you smell it, Paul?_ ’

‘ _Smell?_ ’ echoed Paul. This seemed to be a Dragonese word he didn’t know.

‘Gardas says it smells good – _it smells good,_ ’ said Eski. ‘ _It mostly smells of cows –_ it’s mostly cows.’

‘S _mells of cows,_ ’ Paul repeated, practising. ‘ _Cows smell good? Are you not afraid of cows, Gardas?_ ’ He was laughing, burn him, remembering the first time Gardas had had to walk through a field full of cattle.

‘ _I’ve got used to them,_ ’ said Gardas. ‘ _And it’s not just the cows, it’s the green plants – even the rotting wood. It’s all Cideria._ ’

‘ _In spring, the woods will smell of wild garlic,_ ’ said Eski. ‘ _There’s always a lot of it about. The goats will give garlic cheese._ ’

Paul said in Dragonese, ‘ _What was that?_ ’ and Eski translated.

‘ _How do you know Dragonese?_ ’ Gardas asked.

‘ _Hearing you talking to Perdita!_ ’ said Paul, and without being able to see him, Gardas was sure he was rolling his eyes at such naivety. ‘ _You don’t talk about good smells in Westron,_ ’ he added. ‘ _You’re different in Dragonese. More human._ ’

Gardas laughed, and had difficulty restraining himself from snorting a blast of fire. ‘ _I love you, Paul,_ ’ he said.

‘Did that mean “I love you,”?’ Paul asked Eski. Her small furry body moved, perhaps because she was nodding her head, and Paul said, ‘ _I love you, Gardas – Daddy._ ’

‘ _We’d better head back soon,_ ’ Eski warned. ‘ _Beatrice and Auric will be wondering if we’re all right._ ’

‘ _Can we do this again tomorrow?_ ’ asked Paul. ‘ _We’ve got – three more days until school starts._ ’

‘ _Every day, if Beatrice and Auric agree – and Eski, of course,_ ’ added Gardas hastily. ‘ _What happens about school, now?_ ’

Paul didn’t have enough Dragonese to explain, so he spoke in Westron, which Eski translated. Gardas could follow some of what Paul said, even in dragon-form, but it was confusing when he was not only listening with dragon ears, but processing the human words through a dragon brain. So if he had a different-shaped brain, was he still Gardas? He felt like Gardas, today, with Paul on his back, more than he ever had in dragon-form before.

‘ _His school is ten miles away – that’s at least four or five hours’ walk each way,_ ’ Eski translated. ‘ _He could go back to living in the troll’s cave during term-time, but he doesn’t want to, if you and Beatrice and Auric are all here. It’s got a boarding-house for a few children who are orphans or whose parents work away from home, but it’s not a boarding-school like his old school. So the alternative is that he lives here, and someone gives him a lift in…_ ’

Paul put in a comment in Westron, in which Gardas clearly made out his own name, and could guess the rest. ‘ _You want us to take turns?_ ’ he asked. ‘ _Auric bringing you on the broom one day, Beatrice the next day, you riding a dragon there the third day?_ ’

‘ _Yes!_ ’ said Paul. ‘ _We were good today, weren’t we? I’m good and ready._ ’

‘ _You might be, but I’m not – not when I come back on my own,_ ’ Gardas explained. ‘ _I can stay sane, when there’s someone with me who can speak Dragonese, but on my own I’d just want to attack things. Is it all right if Eski comes with us? She’s to look after me on the return journey, not to look after you. If you don’t mind, Eski?_ ’

‘ _That could work_ ,’ said Eski. ‘ _After a while, I might not even need to come with you, Paul. I’m here as a parenting instructor, but Auric’s bound to get his parenting licence soon, and Gardas has decided not to try for his just yet. So I could live near your school, meet Gardas at the school gate one day in three and ride him home, spend the day here, and then ride him back to meet you._ ’ Paul seemed to be struggling to follow this, so Eski explained it again in Westron.

‘ _That’s good,_ ’ said Paul. ‘ _But now, you’re my – dragon-riding instructor?_ ’

‘ _And my being-ridden instructor?_ ’ added Gardas.

‘ _Something like that,_ ’ Eski agreed.

When they arrived home, and Gardas was back in human form, they explained this plan to Beatrice, who looked startled, but then – as far as Gardas could tell – quite pleased. ‘That’s – a very creative solution,’ she said. ‘And – Gardas, you were able to stay calm and rational, when you were out flying today?’

‘Yes,’ said Gardas. He felt ashamed. ‘I’m sorry I can’t do that for you.’

‘It’s probably having someone to speak Dragonese to that helps,’ said Beatrice cheerfully. ‘Auric and I ought to learn it, too. I’m impressed at how much Paul has picked up.’

‘It’s not just that,’ said Gardas. ‘I can’t ever be a sane, normal were-dragon. I can’t behave properly without someone to control me. And I might live another thousand years. You and Paul and Eski won’t always be there to watch me.’

‘Did you know,’ said Beatrice, ‘that even Grey dragons don’t go into battle without a rider on their backs? They’re much more intelligent and gentler than many species of dragons, and in the normal way of things they don’t need riders – though they sometimes invite kobolds to ride on their backs, just for the company, and a few of them have had human riders. But in battle, even they positively need a human or a kobold to help them stay calm and avoid going into a berserk rage. And you – well, until you came here, you’d never been a dragon in any situation except to fight. So it’s not surprising that you need someone to keep an eye on you, for now. You might grow out of it – from what Xanthus says, you’re probably barely more than a hatchling yet. But even if you’ll always need a rider, or at least a companion – well, humans weren’t meant to be solitary, and many dragon species aren’t either. Blue dragons mostly seem to be loners; Greys live in colonies, usually shared with dwarves and kobolds; I’m not sure about Black dragons, to be honest. But I don’t think you’ll have trouble finding someone who’s willing to be your rider. You’ll know to choose someone better than Azalar next time, won’t you?’

Gardas shuddered. ‘I could hardly do worse.’

‘Well, then. You’re still growing, still learning – and still recovering. You’ll be all right.’


	27. Chapter 27

After that first flight, Paul did not take to calling Gardas ‘Daddy’ on a regular basis, either in Westron or Dragonese. He seemed to have got used to calling Beatrice ‘Mum’, but addressed both Gardas and Auric by their first names, to avoid confusion. Nonetheless, he did seem to be willing to be friends with Gardas about half the time. The other half, he behaved as if Gardas was either an evil villain, or just an animal who could no more understand what Paul said than the goats could.

On the third day of the new school term, after Paul had memorised the new route to school when Beatrice or Auric ferried him in, it was Gardas’s turn to do the school run. Paul was as chatty and friendly on the journey in as anyone could expect a thirteen-year-old to be at eight o’clock on a cold, dark winter morning. He talked to Gardas (mostly in Dragonese, but occasionally relying on Eski to translate from Westron) about the journey and the landmarks they could see, about his school and how different it was from the wizarding school back in the Downs, and about the eccentricities and idiocies of some of his teachers and classmates. Sometimes Gardas made a comment, but mostly he was happy just to listen.

When they landed in a field outside the school, a rather pretty girl with blue eyes and auburn curls came running up. ‘Oooh!’ she exclaimed. ‘Did you get a dragon for Solstice?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Paul dismounting. ‘I’ve had him since the summer; he just wasn’t tame enough to ride to school before.’

‘Can I stroke him?’

‘No!’ said Paul firmly. ‘He’s all right with me – just about – but he’s not really tame. He’s still a ferocious predator at heart.’

Gardas recognised that this was Paul showing off, and lashed his tail and bared his teeth, which made the girl grin with excitement. It was just acting, after all. No different from acting drunk when he was playing Herkle the Hunter. He wasn’t really going to go wild or eat anyone, of course not.

‘Yeah, he’s a vicious beast, and not very bright either – something wrong in the head, you know. He’s the one who burned my arm up.’

‘And you’re still willing to ride him? You’re so brave!’

‘Yeah, well, he’s tamer now than he was then. You just have to let them know who’s boss, that’s all.’ And with that, Paul went on into the school.

That was all? No ‘but then he saved me and killed the Dark wizard who wanted to kill me?’ No chance of an ‘actually, he’s a were-dragon and he’s my real dad’? And how dare this puny boy think he was the boss? Did he think that in dragon-form, Gardas couldn’t understand Westron? For a moment, Gardas felt like attacking him for real – not burning him to death, but biting a chunk out of him, at least, to teach him not to insult his elders. 

He heard Eski murmuring, ‘ _Easy, easy. He’s a brat, but he was just showing off. He’s not worth losing your temper over._ ’

‘ _He just thinks I’m a stupid thug! Like Azalar and everyone else! Well, he’ll see what this stupid thug can do!_ ’

‘ _He doesn’t THINK it, he’s just SAYING it. Anyway, you know Beatrice doesn’t think that. Come on, let’s go home._ ’ 

As they flew home, Eski eventually managed to coax Gardas into a better mood – enough to be able to fly in a straight line, at least – by encouraging him to join her in singing silly kobold songs in Dragonese. But when they landed and Beatrice turned him back into a human, she could see that he was rattled by something. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘I just need to lie down for a bit.’

‘Do you need a calming potion?’ Gardas had stopped taking these every night before bed, as he no longer had problems with accidentally transforming into a dragon. But he still took them when it had been a particularly bad day and he was too jittery to be able to rest otherwise. More often, he just wound down to sleep by covering himself with a blanket, and breathing slowly in and out. It worked – sometimes. Other times, he needed a calming potion to be able to keep still long enough to meditate. As Beatrice had sometimes said, medication wasn’t a substitute for meditation, but it was like a splint for a broken limb, holding his fractured thoughts steady for long enough for them to regrow in the right shape.

‘I can manage without. I think.’

Gardas went up to his bed and lay down on his back, wrapped in blankets. He breathed slowly in and out. Remember God – Beatrice’s God, the one who is everywhere. Wrapping you more closely than this blanket, loving you. You breathe because God wants you to have life and breath. Breathe out your worries. Breathe in God’s love. God’s love for all creatures: for humans, kobolds, dragons, and any combination of them. God loves you, just as She loves Beatrice, just as She loves Paul, just as She loves Auric, just as She loves the ash-tree outside your window.

He relaxed, and smiled. What did it matter what Paul said about him? He knew he wasn’t a monster, and Paul didn’t really think so, either, or he wouldn’t be willing to ride on him. He was just showing off. Probably. But what if Paul really was afraid, deep down, and the times when he treated Gardas like a normal person were another sort of showing off, trying to pretend he wasn’t afraid? How would Gardas know the difference? He was a were-dragon, after all. He couldn’t understand humans’ feelings.

After about half an hour, he felt calm enough to come downstairs. Beatrice asked him how the school run had gone, and he shrugged and said, ‘Not bad. Paul’s fine.’ After all, he wasn’t going to be Paul’s legal father, but Paul’s adopted brother. As a parent, he could have discussed Paul’s behaviour with Beatrice as one adult to another, but talking now about Paul hurting his feelings would be like whining, ‘Mummy, Paul’s being horrid to me, tell him to stop it!’ So he didn’t need to say anything.

Eski looked sharply at him but didn’t comment, and they got on with the work of the day. Auric was working on finding a cure for land blighted by dragon-fire. Gardas incinerated a field full of nettles which a farmer had said they were welcome to experiment on as it wouldn’t grow anything but nettles. Then Auric and Beatrice marked it out into patches three feet square, and tried out different spells on each patch to see which would turn it back into fertile ground.

In the afternoon, Gardas flew out again with Eski to collect Paul. The pretty red-haired girl was still hanging around with Paul, who looked distinctly irritated. ‘No, it’s not!’ he snapped. ‘It isn’t “part of who I am” – it’s just a pain!’

‘Does it still hurt?’ she asked, concerned.

‘No, not physically a pain – I mean it’s a nuisance, not being able to swim properly, or do archery, or anything!’

‘But it shows how brave you are,’ the girl persisted. ‘Not many people would go up against a black dragon. And not many people would go on to tame that dragon and ride him after he’d hurt them.’

This time, instead of showing off how fierce he was, Gardas decided to show how successfully he had been tamed, by lowering his head and gently nuzzling Paul’s shoulder. Paul patted Gardas on the snout with his good hand, then climbed onto his back and called in Dragonese, ‘ _Let’s go!_ ’ As they set off, he took the opportunity to grumble in Dragonese. ‘ _That Mary-Sue Jenkins! She keeps going on about how my arm makes me “special” and “individual”, as if having two good arms would mean I was just totally ordinary and boring!_ ’

‘ _I wouldn’t mind being ordinary and boring,_ ’ Gardas pointed out. Maybe if he joined in the conversation properly, he might actually learn to understand Paul a bit better.

‘ _Whatever!_ ’ Paul said nothing more for the rest of the trip. Gardas and Eski talked to each other instead.

So it went on for the next three months. Perdita learned to stand and to walk, first holding onto the handle of her toy cart, or Gardas’s hand, and then on her own. Snow fell, and hung around for half a month before melting. The family went for a walk together (Gardas carrying Perdita, because she was still too little to wade through snow this deep), and Beatrice and Auric played at throwing snowballs at each other, laughing happily like children. With a little coaxing, Gardas joined in. It wasn’t magical duelling, but at least he could pack a good snowball and throw it accurately at Auric. Paul rolled his eyes at them in adolescent embarrassment. Gardas guessed the reason, and muttered to him after a few minutes, ‘No reason you can’t join in. Even if you can’t pack a hard ball of snow, you can throw a handful of wet slush so it goes straight down the neck.’

‘Yes, I know I could!’ snapped Paul. ‘I’m not HELPLESS! It’s just that it’s embarrassing when grown-ups insist on behaving like children!’

Whatever his feelings about snowball fights, at least Paul seemed to enjoy riding Gardas, whether to school or just circling over the hills and valleys near home, and there were times when they almost seemed like friends. However, as soon as he reached the school gate, Paul switched to treating Gardas as something between a beast of burden, a conquered foe, and an embarrassing relative (eccentric parent? Tag-along younger sibling?) to patronise in order to make himself look sophisticated by comparison. Was he turning into a bully like Azalar? Gardas didn’t want to think that, couldn’t bear it to be true. Probably, it was just a reaction against what Gardas had done to him – destroying his arm, and taking away his magic. You couldn’t blame him for being angry, under the circumstances.

Xanthus was trying to encourage Gardas to be more aware of his own feelings, and one day when he and Paul had been discussing all this (in Paul’s absence), Xanthus asked, ‘Are you angry with Auric for taking your magic?

Gardas had drunk a bottle of truth potion before this conversation, and he knew that sometimes the potion helped him to find feelings he didn’t know he had. But on this occasion, he (or the potion) replied much what he would have expected: ‘No. He did what he thought he needed to do to protect me. Anyway, I deserved it, and he didn’t know what losing my magic would do to a were-dragon. Anyway, I don’t want to hate people. I hated Azalar enough for a lifetime, and he’s dead. So I have to tell myself everyone else is all right, and I’m the only one who’s evil, and then I only have to hate myself.’

‘Don’t you think that hating yourself is just as destructive as hating anyone else?’ Xanthus reminded him.

‘Beatrice says it is. It ought to make sense, but – hating myself doesn’t feel wrong the way hating other people does. Anyway, I love Paul, so I ought to kill his enemies, and I am his enemy. It’s right to hate monsters.’

‘Gardas, are you even trying to get better?’ Xanthus asked.

‘Not any more. I was, when I thought I was Perdita’s father. But I’m not, and Paul doesn’t want me as a father, when he can have Auric and Beatrice.’

‘Have you asked Paul about that?’

‘Yes. He just says, “Whatever.” And I don’t know what he feels, because I’m a monster, and monsters don’t understand how humans feel.’

Gardas continued to try to meditate, sometimes. But it was harder and harder to convince himself that he was feeling God’s love, and not just his fantasy that God loved him, as he had once fantasised that Beatrice would fall in love with him. After all, Beatrice said God was everywhere and in everyone, so God was in Paul, so when Paul warned his school-friends, ‘Don’t get near him – he’s a vicious beast,’ that was God speaking. Unless Paul didn’t mean it, in which case it wasn’t.

Auric and Beatrice continued with their dragon-blight research, and Gardas helped as far as a man with no magical powers could. In between, he did the housework, looked after Perdita and read the bestiary and the medical dictionary to her, and listened to the stories Beatrice told the whole family in the evenings.

Gradually, the clues began to come together. The bestiary explained that, while Grey dragons have fire that heals but tears that scorch the ground, Black dragons have fire that blights and destroys but blood that has healing powers. The medical dictionary confirmed that the blood of Black dragons could heal wounds and ulcers or, if drunk, could cure diarrhoea. Beatrice never bothered with it, because she didn’t like to use animal parts when an infusion of dragonwort leaves worked just as well for bathing simple wounds. But maybe real dragon’s blood had greater powers, or why would there be such a lucrative smuggling trade in it?

Then there were stories. That poor shaman in How to Hunt a Shaman, cutting himself daily to atone for accidentally killing his best friend, so that his friend’s ghost, trapped in the knife, could be nourished by the blood. How many people had Gardas killed? And how many more, like Paul, had he maimed? Well, only one of them was here for him to make amends to.

He began to form a plan. It could wait until after the Maidensday play, because it was much too late to disrupt that. 


	28. Chapter 28

The snow melted, the days began to lengthen, the snowdrops came out, and then everywhere was yellow with celandines and daffodils and primroses. Finally, Maidensday came, and the mummers performed the play from dawn, in the garden outside the Knight and Dragon. Everyone clapped and cheered at the end, and the people who weren’t involved in the play had built campfires, both for warmth and to fry breakfast. As everyone feasted on bacon and egg sandwiches, the Mummers began to discuss what play to put on for Midsummer.

‘The Three Witches?’ George suggested. ‘Wouldn’t Gardas be good as…’

‘The wicked Duke?’ Meg suggested.

‘No, no! I was thinking the Fool. And Paul as the missing Prince.’

‘Isn’t Gardas a bit – tall?’

‘It doesn’t matter. We can just change the script to say “funny-looking man” instead of “little man”. It’s the character that’s important, not his height: he’s a serious man who’s forced to be a jester; he’s a good man who’s trying to be loyal to a villain, and trying to limit the damage, while he’s in love with one of the witches who are trying to get rid of the villain; and he’s a servant who is made king, and just sees that as becoming the servant of the entire kingdom. He’s a conflicted character, and if anyone can do conflicted, it’s Gardas.’

Gardas smiled inwardly at the praise (was it praise?) while pretending to be occupied with nothing but his breakfast. If he wasn’t going to disrupt this play, he needed to put his plan into practice before George made any formal casting decisions.

As soon as they arrived home, he said to Paul, ‘Let’s go flying – just you and me. We don’t need Eski this time. You’ll need a knife.’

Paul blinked. ‘What for?’

‘You’ll see. Don’t let your mum see it.’

It was the first day of the year to be warm enough not to need a jacket, but it was still cool enough for long sleeves. Paul wrapped a kitchen knife in a tea-towel, slipped it up the sleeve of his withered arm, and buttoned the cuff. ‘Mum, can you turn Gardas into a dragon?’ he called. ‘He wants to go out flying.’

Beatrice worked the spell, and Gardas set out with Paul on his back. The flight was quiet without Eski’s chatter. Paul, for once, was in a mood to make conversation, asking Gardas whether he’d enjoyed acting in the play as much as Paul had, did he want to be in the next one, did he know what it was about, etc? Gardas said nothing. He didn’t need conversation to keep his mind calm. It was focused on his plan.

He landed on the top of a limestone hill, high enough not to be waterlogged in the wet spring weather, and with enough space for them to stand face to chest. If Paul reacted badly, he might roll down a slope, but at least there weren’t any cliff edges for him to fall off.

‘ _Why’ve we stopped?_ ’ asked Paul.

‘ _Climb down from my back._ ’ Paul did so. ‘ _Now, take your knife out._ ’

‘ _What are you playing at?_ ’ Paul demanded.

‘ _I took your arm. Now I need to give it back._ ’

‘ _You can’t! Look, I’m getting used to managing with one arm, okay? So stop being silly and let’s go home, shall we?_ ’

‘ _Take your knife and chip a scale off my chest._ ’

‘ _What do you want me to do then? Stab you? Are you insane?_ ’

‘ _Yes. The shaman pays for his magic in blood. And dragon’s blood heals._ ’

‘ _Yeah, but – I don’t WANT you to die!_ ’

‘ _Why not?_ ’

Paul considered. ‘ _Uh – because George wants us both in his next play?_ ’

‘ _He can cast someone else. Or do a different play._ ’

‘ _Well – because I’d have a twenty-mile walk home?_ ’

Well, that was stage one. Gardas hadn’t REALLY thought Paul did want to kill him – at least, probably not – but he’d needed to give him the option. But if Paul specifically wanted NOT to kill him, then starting with that as the initial suggestion meant that Gardas could then offer a compromise. ‘ _All right. Not in the heart. Just chip a scale off anywhere –a leg, my tail, anything – and then cut me with the knife. Rub my blood over your bad arm._ ’

‘ _No. Gardas, stop being weird. I’m not going to cut you and that’s that!_ ’

No, Gardas realised. He shouldn’t ask Paul to do something like that for him. He should organise it for himself, like the shaman in the story. He couldn’t get his teeth in the right position to bite himself in the chest, but he could certainly bite his own foreleg. He did so, sinking his long, sharp teeth in deeply to the veins above the fangs, until blood spurted out. He held his leg up so that the blood spurted over Paul’s withered, blighted right arm.

‘ _You’re a maniac! You could bleed to death like this! Hold still, let me…_ ’ Paul quickly unbuttoned his shirt (letting the knife slide out) and tied it round Gardas’s wounded foreleg, as tightly as he could, not just bandaging it but trying to stem the flow of blood. Then he picked up the sheathed knife in his right hand and pulled himself onto Gardas’s back with the left. ‘ _We’re going home RIGHT NOW,_ ’ he insisted. ‘ _Quickly, before you lose YOUR foreleg. I might’ve tied it too tight._ ’

As soon as they arrived home, Paul banged on the door. ‘Mum, quick! Gardas is hurt! He bit his own leg!’

Beatrice was in so much of a hurry that she didn’t even have time to greet Gardas and kiss him, but just cast the humanising spell from upstairs. Seeing that Gardas’s arm was still approximately bandaged in Paul’s shirt – even if it was much looser around a mere human arm – she took the time to fetch clean proper bandages and a bottle of dragonwort infusion to bathe the wound in. ‘Now, let’s see how bad this is,’ she said.

Gardas unwrapped the bloodstained shirt to see what his wound looked like in human form. It had almost completely healed already, leaving only a semi-circular scar on each side of his arm, just above the wrist, that looked like a human’s upper and lower teeth-marks. One small patch, about the size of his thumbnail, was pink and raw, but it wasn’t bleeding.

Beatrice smiled. ‘Well, in that case, I think you’ve got time to get dressed before we discuss this. Cup of tea?’

‘Please.’

Beatrice made the tea while Gardas put on the clothes he had removed before turning into a dragon, and Paul went upstairs to fetch himself a fresh shirt. As Beatrice came back, she picked up the bloodstained shirt, and turned it over in her hands. As she picked out some small object that had got wedged in the shirt, Gardas could feel the raw patch on his arm tingling, and then he felt – curiosity. Not his curiosity – Beatrice’s. There was no risk of confusing it with his own feelings. The emotion smelled Beatrice-shaped, felt Beatrice-coloured. There was a wash of intellectual satisfaction mixed with awe – a sense of ‘Oh, so that’s how it works!’ mixed briefly with a sharper spike of surprise. And, playing over all those bits of the tune, there was a background harmony of love and sympathy and anxiety.

Beatrice put something small, hard and black down on the table, and Gardas couldn’t feel her any more. He wished he could. Beatrice’s emotions smelled nice.

‘That makes sense, anyway,’ she said. ‘Dragon blood is a magical healer for humans, not just an ordinary medicine to fight infection and promote healing, so as soon as you turned human, the spilt blood around your wound and on the bandage must have acted on you and healed you instantly. You’ve lost a scale, by the way. But do you feel up to telling me why you bit yourself, and why Paul was carrying a knife?’

‘I wanted to heal Paul,’ said Gardas. ‘It worked, too. It was my idea – I wanted him to cut me. I didn’t tell him that until it was time – he didn’t know why we were going.’

‘So that’s why my son now has both hands in working order.’ Beatrice paused. ‘That was very brave and very generous of you, but you do realise we could have done it at home, don’t you? I could have taken a sample with a needle and a syringe.’

‘But you wouldn’t have,’ Gardas pointed out. ‘Neither would Paul.’

‘Oh, I see. This was a case of it being easier to get forgiveness than permission?’ Beatrice tried to look stern and disapproving, but as she ran her finger over the scale, Gardas could feel her amusement.

Paul came downstairs. ‘Mum, is Gardas all right? And what’s this?’ He picked up the scale. Paul’s emotions felt spikier and sounded a tinnier note than Beatrice’s, but, to Gardas’s surprise, they were no less warm. There was astonishment, disdain, embarrassment – but these were just patterns on the overall warm blanket of love and pity, mixed with gratitude and – to Gardas’s surprise – not fear, but regret and shame. Was he wishing he had been friendlier to Gardas? And there was resolve, too.

‘Oh – it’s one of your scales,’ Paul said. ‘Mum, are dragon scales good for anything, or should I just put it in the rubbish?’

‘No!’ breathed Gardas, horrified. He didn’t want to lose this amazing gift – but then again, Paul probably didn’t want his heart spied on.

Eski, who had been sitting apparently asleep in an armchair, twitched her whiskers. ‘You humans don’t even know what it is, do you?’ she asked.

‘It’s a dragon scale,’ said Paul, puzzled.

‘Exactly! Don’t you realise, that’s what dragons – very loving, insanely reckless dragons – do for riders they love? They give away one of their own scales – which means they’ve now got a soft, scale-less patch where anyone could stab them – so that the person holding it can share his feelings with his dragon, no matter how far apart they are. You humans tell stories where the hero can slay the dragon only by stabbing it in its one vulnerable spot, yes? Well, the only dragons who HAVE vulnerable spots are the ones who once loved someone enough to make themselves vulnerable. Gardas has a soft spot for you.’

‘Really?’ Paul hesitated, then picked up the scale again. His emotions shimmered with awe and gratitude, mixed with uneasiness. After all, holding the scale, displaying all his raw teenage emotion to another person, made him vulnerable, too. ‘Am I what you expected?’ he asked eventually.

‘You’re – a nicer person than I realised,’ said Gardas. ‘I’m glad. Because I’d love you even if you weren’t.’

Gardas spent the rest of the day playing with his new toy, urging everyone in the house to handle the scale in turn – including Perdita, as long as Beatrice, using a tea-towel to avoid touching the scale herself, held onto it to make sure Perdita couldn’t swallow it. Auric’s feelings were coloured with regret and shame as well as pity, but there was friendliness and respect there, too. Eski’s were a different texture from those of any of the humans – furry and half-feral – but full of amusement and well-wishing. Perdita’s were scaly, closer to Gardas’s own, but so full of uncomplicated joy and zest for life that there was no possibility of confusing them. And all of them, whatever else they said from moment to moment, said, underneath: _love/acceptance/family_.

Yes. He was part of this family: not just visiting for a while, like Eski – good friend that she was – but forever part of it, even though the human members would be dead within a century. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t Perdita’s biological father, and wouldn’t be Paul’s legal father; he was no less a member of the family whether his role was labelled ‘parent’, ‘uncle’, ‘adoptive sibling’ or – at least when in dragon-form – ‘family pet’. He belonged here. They belonged to each other. And he wasn’t so different from humans, anyway – he could distinguish between his own feelings and the ones he was sensing through his missing scale, but not because humans had a different kind of emotions that a were-dragon couldn’t feel. Maybe the other people in this family had softer, happier feelings than he mostly did – but this was true of Perdita even more than of the pure-bred humans. And his own feelings had been growing much warmer and fuzzier in the seven months since coming to Cideria – or maybe in the nine months since finding Perdita – than they had been before.

The scale relayed emotions, not thoughts, so Gardas sometimes asked what they were about – for example, the sudden jolt of amusement, vengeful glee, irritation, hope, and desire that had shot through Paul. Paul looked embarrassed – it was easier to identify the emotion on the boy’s face when Gardas could compare it to the one pulsing through his own wrist – and then explained. ‘Oh, I was just thinking about Mary-Sue Jenkins at school, and how she went on about how my bad arm made me special. She’s going to HATE it when I can beat her at archery! Or maybe she’ll like me – and then I’ll know if it’s me she likes, not just my bad arm.’

Paul announced before going to bed that he was going to put the scale in a box on his bedside table for safekeeping when he wasn’t using it. Gardas didn’t complain. It didn’t matter if the connection wasn’t continuously in use, as long as he knew it could be. But as Gardas himself lay down to sleep, he felt his wrist tingle as Paul took the scale out one last time that night: _love you, relaxed, sleepyyyyyyy…_

Gardas was tempted to go to sleep with his son’s dreams radiating into his wrist. Then he thought about it, waited until Paul was fully asleep, and then went into the boy’s room and gently put the scale back in the box. A teenager had the right to dream in private, after all. And the scale would still be there in the morning.


End file.
